Kenji Sawada

As frontman of The Tigers, Kenji Sawada became one of Japan's preeminent singers during the late 1960s, as well as one of the country's first teen idols. He launched a popular solo career during the group's final years and remained at the forefront of Japanese pop culture for decades, winning nearly a dozen Japanese Record Awards along the way. Born in Tsunoi, Iwami, on June 25, 1948, Sawada joined The Tigers's lineup in 1966 and adopted the nickname of "Julie." The group's first single was "Smile for Me," a Barry Gibb composition that reached Number 3 on the Japanese charts. More hits followed, and The Tigers appeared on the cover of the American music magazine Rolling Stone in 1969, becoming the first Japanese musicians to do so. Sawada released his first solo album, Julie, in December 1969, then focused exclusively on his solo career after The Tigers' breakup in 1971. Wildly prolific, he released fourteen albums during the 1970s alone, winning Japan Records Awards for hit songs like "Yurusarenai Ai," "Tsuioku," and "Katte ni Shiyagare." He also starred in a handful of films during the decade's second half, including Taiyō o Nusunda Otoko, and continued to appear in various movies throughout the 1980s, '90s, and beyond. Meanwhile, Sawada continued exploring a mix of rock, pop, and adult contemporary influences with his solo albums, which he released in collaboration with labels like Polydor and Toshiba-EMI. After the release of Atarashii Omoide 2001 in 2001, he formed his own record company, Julie Label, in order to issue albums like 2004's Croquemadame & Hotcakes as an independent musician. A mainstream figure more than half a century, he scored another Top 40 hit with "いつか君は" in 2022, nearly 60 years after first gracing the Oricon charts.

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