Haruomi Hosono Covers the Moonglows' 'Sincerely' With Japanese Lyrics Ahead of New Album
Haruomi Hosono has released a cover of the Moonglows' 1954 doo-wop classic "Sincerely," reimagining the song with a sparse acoustic-guitar arrangement and lyrics he wrote in Japanese. The track appears on his forthcoming album Yours Sincerely, set for release on September 11, 2026 through Ghostly International, which is taking pre-orders through its online store. The album package includes 10 pieces of artwork. Pitchfork reported the cover on August 12.
The original "Sincerely" was a doo-wop hit for the Moonglows, written by group member Harvey Fuqua with original lyrics by Alan Freed — the Cleveland disc jockey whose name became inseparable from the genre's popularisation in the 1950s. Hosono's version strips the song to its bones: voice and guitar, the doo-wop harmonies replaced by a single performer and his own translation of the sentiment.
Hosono is best known internationally as a co-founder of Yellow Magic Orchestra, the Japanese electronic group whose late-1970s work helped shape the sound of synth-pop and electronic music worldwide. A solo artist across a sprawling catalogue that spans pop, folk, exotica and ambient, he has rarely stayed in one mode for long. A doo-wop cover rendered in Japanese fits a career defined by genre crossings that never ask permission.
Fans will have a chance to hear Hosono live this autumn. He has planned shows with Toro y Moi on September 16 at New York's Radio City Music Hall and September 20 at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, according to Pitchfork.
What makes the "Sincerely" cover striking is its smallness. A songwriter who helped build the architecture of electronic pop has taken a song from the era before rock and roll hardened into a category, and sung it alone, in his own language, with nothing but a guitar. The album title echoes the song's name, suggesting the whole record may operate in a similar register — intimate, direct, unadorned. Whether it does, listeners will find out on September 11.
