Minako Yoshida

is a Japanese singer, lyricist, and composer. She made her professional debut as a singer after meeting Happy End members Haruomi Hosono and Takashi Matsumoto during high school. Following her 1973 debut album , she released a few dozen albums and singles under RCA Victor, Alfa Records, MCA Victor, and Avex IO, and won the 1985 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity Silver Award. She also worked as a composer and lyricist, with her work including the Tatsuro Yamashita albums Circus Town, Spacy (1977) and For You (1982), as well as a music producer, arranger, and backup singer. Since the 2010s, she has enjoyed renewed popularity due to the city pop wave. Biography Early life and career Minako Yoshida was born on 7 April 1953 in Ōmiya, Saitama.

While in junior high school, Yoshida performed as an organist alongside blues singer Toru Oki at a Ginza disco.

Music career Yoshida's first album with Alfa Records, Ai wa Omou Mama (1978), was produced in the Los Angeles area by Billy Page and Gene Page, with local musicians Ed Greene, Greg Phillinganes, David T. Walker, and Wah Wah Watson performing. In addition to releasing her own songs, she did backup vocals for other artists, including Chu Kosaka and Yumi Matsutoya. She performed the theme song for the 1999 drama , and released the Suzuran Original Soundtrack in June 1999. In July 2020, four SACD editions of Yoshida's albums, remastered by Bernie Grundman, were released. Limited-edition vinyl versions of her albums Dark Crystal, Gazer, and Bells were released in 2023.

Legacy and themes Following the city pop wave of the 2010s and 2020s, Yoshida rose back to popularity, with Yūsuke Tsuruta of Yomiuri Shimbun calling Yoshida "one of the most-watched figures amidst the recent city pop boom." In September 2020, In Focus (a programme on British radio station NTS Radio) aired a one-hour remix of Yoshida's music.

Several observers noted that after becoming more prevalent in her music starting in the mid-1970s, funk became an integral part of some of Yoshida's releases, including Monochrome and Gazer. Ed Cunningham of Tokyo Weekender cited Yoshida as an example of singers who "increasingly built elements of disco, funk and R&B into their balladry". Tsuruta remarked that there is a contrast between Dark Crystal and Gazer in regards to her processing of her husband's death, with the former being "introspective and austere" and the latter being an "explosively avant-garde" reaction towards her experiences with his death. Her brother is recording engineer . Discography Albums Title Year Details Peak chart positions Sales JPN 1973 Released: 1973 Label: Showboat — — (stylized in all-caps) 1975 Released: 1975 Label: RCA Victor — — (stylized in all-caps) 1976 Released: 1 January 1976 Label: RCA Victor — — (stylized in all-caps) 1977 Released: 1977 Label: RCA Victor — — 1986 Released: 1986 Label: Edition Gaspard 32 — (stylized in all-caps) 1990 Released: 21 March 1990 Label: Happinet Pictures 45 — (stylized in all-caps) 1995 Released: 22 February 1995 Label: MCA Victor 30 — (stylized in low-caps) 1995 Released: 22 November 1995 Label: MCA Victor — — Key (stylized in all-caps) 1996 Released: 23 October 1996 Label: MCA Victor — — Spell (stylized in all-caps) 1997 Released: 22 October 1997 Label: MCA Victor 29 — Stable 2002 Released: 9 October 2002 Label: Avex Io — — Revelation (stylized in all-caps) 2003 Released: 27 November 2003 Label: Avex Io — — Reconstruction (stylized in all-caps) 2004 Released: 24 March 2004 Label: Avex Io — — Spangles 2006 Released: 22 February 2006 Label: Avex Io — — Singles