"Turning Japanese" is a song released by English band the Vapors, from their album New Clear Days, and the song for which they are best known. The lyric consists mainly of the singer talking about pictures of his love. It prominently features an Oriental riff played on guitar.
Songwriter David Fenton explains: "Turning Japanese is all the clichés about angst and youth and turning into something you didn't expect to."
The band knew they had a success with "Turning Japanese", so much so that they waited until their second single before releasing it, fearing that if they released it as their first, they would become "one-hit wonders". They never matched its success.
The song enjoyed some sales in Japan after its great success in Australia, where it spent two weeks at No. 1 during June 1980.
"Live" version or the version that they played at some TV Studio with the top 10 songs.
This is the music video I remembered seeing on MTV in the early 1980's. I had to look for it. I did notice all the stereotypes from the Samurai swords, to the cameras, the Geisha girls and the fans. In this day and age the SJW's would have shredded this video. This proves to me that the people in this day and age didn't have a sense of humor.
Man, it's been a long time since I heard that. What's weird is that this became a bit of a meme with my crowd, where someone would say they were turning Japanese when some Japan reference came up.
ReplyDeleteHey Borepatch;
DeleteThey still use it the same way at work, it has been a piece of culture reference now.
Honestly never heard of them, or the song... Sigh
ReplyDeleteHey Old NFO;
DeleteI am surprised that you didn't hear of this song, with you being a squid type, and all the Okinawa deployments in the P-3 community.