hey, listen: POP LADY (1977) by yuko shibuya
There's some really interesting stuff happening in the vague neighborhood of "1970s Japanese singer/songwriter pop," and I especially like the kind of funk crossover going on in this album. Early Yumi Arai/Matsutoya albums when she was still releasing under her maiden name are kind of firmly this for me. (I really like "Kitto Ieru" (I Know I Can Tell You) off of her debut album.)
It might just be that a lot of it is right on the edge of the popularization of digital synthesizers around... maybe 1982 when MIDI was introduced? I think there's a similar kind of thing happening with the shift from analog to digital processes in animation in the late '90s/early '00s. Suddenly the change in toolsets mean that, looking back, a lot of the stuff right after that shift feels very elementary because people are kind of figuring out those new workflows from scratch. But right before that switchover there's a ton of really fucking talented people working with a really high degree of mastery and knowledge.