Chris Mosdell

Christopher John Mosdell (born 9 November 1949) is a British lyricist, poet, author, composer, vocalist and illustrator based in Tokyo, Japan, and New York City, United States.

He has collaborated with an extensive array of musicians and artists, though he is especially known for his work with Yellow Magic Orchestra and the poet Shuntarō Tanikawa.

His interactive audio-visual album Equasian, featuring an experimentation with "VISIC" (visual music), melded his scientific background into a musical framework, and his Oracles of Distraction, a set of poetic cards set to musical coordinates, further expanded his lyrical idiom.

He moved to Tokyo in 1976 after completing a BSc (specialising in microbiology) from the University of Nottingham and withdrawing from a master's degree in pathology at the University of Exeter after realising his scientific leanings were at odds with his poetic interests.

Arriving in Japan, he became a script-writer for NHK, numerous radio programs, a reporter for Radio Free Europe, and a reader of the BBC World Service radio news.

His plays The Sound Seller (1977) and The Star Polisher (1978) were both produced for NHK and his collected television scripts, Laugh Out Loud (Asahi Publishing), were published in 1979—an edition that is still a popular text in Japanese universities today.

In 1977, a series of Mosdell's poems, published in the Japan Times, came to the attention of the drummer for the Sadistic Mika Band, Yukihiro Takahashi.

Takahashi asked to use the poems as the lyrical base for pop singer Rajie, whose album he was producing.

Shortly afterward, Sadistic Mika Band disbanded, and some of the remaining members, including Takahashi, formed Sadistics as a follow-up act.

Mosdell wrote the lyrics to the "Crazy Kimono Kids" and "Tokyo Taste" for their Sadistics album (1977).

Takahashi continued to be a prime collaborator for Mosdell, inviting him to participate as the lyricist in his next musical endeavour, Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), who would go on to major success not only in Japan, but be one of the few Japanese acts to become known overseas as influential innovators in the field of popular electronic music.

They helped pioneer synthpop and ambient house, helped usher in electronica, anticipated the beats and sounds of electro music, laid the foundations for contemporary J-pop, and contributed to the development of house, techno, and hip hop.

Mosdell's best-known YMO songs include "Behind the Mask", "Solid State Survivor", "Nice Age", "Insomnia", "La Femme Chinoise", and "Citizens of Science", from the albums Yellow Magic Orchestra (1978), Solid State Survivor (1979), and ×∞ Multiplies (1980)—lyrics envisaging a socially inert world, digitised and impersonal, and controlled by a forceful hidden authority within a landscape, essentially Japanese, but tinged with Chinese motifs.

The popularity and international influence of YMO made Mosdell a sought-after lyricist for other Japanese recording artists, as well as continuing as the central lyricist for the Yellow Magic Orchestra live album Public Pressure (1982).

During this time Mosdell wrote chart-topping lyrics for other artists, including, among many others, Sandii and the Sunsetz, Sheena & The Rokkets, and Imitation.

Continuing his friendship and collaboration with the songwriters behind YMO, Mosdell also worked with these artists on their solo work, writing the bulk of the lyrics for Yukihiro Takahashi's Murdered by the Music solo LP, and the synthpop club single, "War Head" with Ryuichi Sakamoto.

"War Head", originally titled "Night Boys Pick Up Some Heat", was written for the opening of the Roppongi nightclub Lexington Queen, but was so favoured by Sakamoto that he remixed it, with Mosdell performing vocals for the first time since YMO's "Citizens of Science", in a rap-styled lyrical rant.

The breadth of Mosdell's lyrical experimentation during this period led to his first solo recording.

This resulted in the 1982 album Equasian, with its use of global ethnic sounds pre-dating the popularity of world music.

It was also the first of Mosdell's efforts employing his visual lyrical and compositional technique, VISIC, which he used as the compositional basis for numerous other musical works.

Equasian was showcased as an audio-visual/multimedia experience through live performances and a VISIC Exhibition at the Gallery Harajuku in Tokyo.

In the same city, pop singer Michael Jackson recorded a cover of YMO's "Behind the Mask" for inclusion on his 1982 Thriller album.

Producer Quincy Jones had heard the Yellow Magic Orchestra version on a trip to Japan and played it to Jackson, who decided to turn it from an electro-pop song into a dance-funk version, with additional lyrics by Jackson.

Mosdell has said of the collaboration, "when Michael Jackson took it, it made it into a love song about a woman. It was a completely different premise to me, I was talking about a very impersonal, socially controlled society, a future technological era, and the mask represented that immobile, unemotional state. But hey, I let him have that one."

An agreement to share the royalties equally between Sakamoto, Mosdell and Jackson broke down when the management of Yellow Magic Orchestra disagreed and it prevented the song to be released on Jackson's sixth studio album, Thriller, and remained unreleased for over 25 years.

"Sticky Music", was another international chart success for Mosdell, performed by Sandii and the Sunsetz, as it rose to Number 3 on the Australian Top 40 pop chart in 1983.

His lyrics to date were published in Ink Music: The Collected Lyrics of Chris Mosdell.

His popularity as a Tokyo-based English writer also led him to write for numerous Japanese television commercials, often collaborating with former Sadistic Mika Band lead vocalist and guitarist Kazuhiko Katō.

The Mosdell-Sakamoto-Jackson version was later picked up by Jackson's keyboardist Greg Phillinganes for his 1984 album Pulse, and by Eric Clapton, for his August album, released in 1986.

He has written lyrics for Sarah Brightman and Boy George; co-written lyrics with Michael Jackson, had his work covered by Eric Clapton, worked with the West African kora player Toumani Diabaté and the calligraphy artist Juichi Yoshikawa; and wrote the verse dance drama Amaterasu, the Resurrection of Radiance, that was performed with the City Ballet of London at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (2001).

As "Mozz", Mosdell has also released a series of award-winning children's books, which he also illustrates.

For all its experimentation and relative obscurity, the record's relevance and popularity has continued up through recent times, being reissued as a gate-fold, full-color CD package by Sony in 2003.

During a period of increasing international collaborations, Mosdell travelled to Los Angeles to work with pop singer Boy George.

They worked together on two single cuts ("Fireboy Meets His Match" and "All Prayers are Answered") for a Japanese shōchū television commercial that, although released for a few weeks, was suddenly withdrawn after the singer's brush with heroin.

A film about his life entitled "Ink Music: In the Land of the Hundred-Tongued Lyricist", featuring interviews with many of his collaborators and shot in Japan and the United States, was released in 2009.

The documentary bills him as the "Lafcadio Hearn of Lyrics", Long term collaborator Ryuichi Sakamoto describes his interpretation of how Mosdell creates his varied works; "When I read his lyrics, I see him in a high school chemistry laboratory, making Molotov cocktails – his eyes lucid, blue and very clear."

In 2023 he was the recipient of Japan’s Classics Day Cultural Foundation Prize, an award “honouring individuals who have contributed to the dissemination and enlightenment of Japanese classical culture” ––an award presided over by Her Imperial Princess Akiko of Mikasa.

Mosdell was born in Gainsborough, England and grew up in North Wales.

The Michael Jackson version of the song "Behind The Mask" got its official release on 10 December 2010, as the ninth track on the posthumous album, Michael.

It was described by Time magazine as "Michael's finest moment" and by NME as "something remarkable... an absolute revelation... actually brilliant."