Tokyo Jihen -- Onna no Ko wa Dare de mo（女の子は誰でも）

 

This week's "Nodo Jiman"（のど自慢）took place in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture, a city that I've known mostly for a famous outlet mall (I had a lot of students who enjoyed shopping at the place). One of the participants today sang a Tokyo Jihen（東京事変）tune that I hadn't heard before and wanted to try some further listenings.

In recent years, vocalist Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）, who I first got to know as the rock girl with some great growl and a terrifying stare, has been embracing her jazzy inner self, and I think that initially came true with the Big Band version of "Sid to Hakuchumu"（シドと白昼夢）which was on her 7th single "Mayonaka no Junketsu"（真夜中の純潔）from 2001. At the time, I believe that I was in the middle of my jazz obsession, so to hear one of the most original Japanese music acts try a genre that I wouldn't have imagined that she would ever tackle was pretty darn refreshing.

Well, since then, it seems like Shiina has been getting more and more into jazz as we all got deeper into the new century, a genre that I had read somewhere that her father very much enjoyed. And in 2011, as the vocalist for Tokyo Jihen, she and band bassist Seiji Kameda（亀田誠治）came up with "Onna no Ko wa Dare de mo" which can be translated directly as "Girls are Good with Anyone" but the official English title is "Fly Me to Heaven", one-half of the double A-side for the band's 7th single "Sora ga Natteiru"（空が鳴っている...Reverberation） released in May 2011. For the first time in TJ's history, though, they left the arrangement with an outsider instead of handling the song by themselves, and guess what? The outsider was really an old friend, Takayuki Hattori（服部隆之）, who had given the sparkling Big Band swing treatment to "Sid to Hakuchumu" as mentioned in the previous paragraph. If you go through the Hattori file, you'll find that he also provided the epic soundtrack to a particular PlayStation game that I owned and a very popular theme song for a drama series.

Not surprisingly, I've fallen hard for "Onna no Ko wa Dare de mo" which seems to not only draw in the old-time swing but also some of that 1950s or 1960s razz-ma-tazz show tune feeling on the old American variety shows and specials featuring folks like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Shining Shiina and even the TJ members get in on the show time act in the music video; the only things that were missing were the frame of an old cathode-ray tube television set and black-and-white. And where were the Radio City Music Hall dancers?

The single itself made it to No. 6 on Oricon, and both A-sides have also been placed onto Tokyo Jihen's 5th studio album "Daihakken"（大発見...Discovery） which came out in June of the same year. It hit No. 1 and went Gold.

The crazy thing is that after all I'd said at the top about not hearing this Tokyo Jihen song before, it turns out that I did. It was the commercial tune for a Shiseido cosmetics ad featuring Shiina. This I do remember seeing before but probably had assumed that the jingle was just a quick jingle. Knowing full well about tie-ups between commercials and pop songs in Japan, I should have given myself a Gibbs slap upside the head. Not only that but apparently "Onna no Ko wa Dare de mo" was part of the singer's performance at the 2011 Kohaku Utagassen but I don't remember seeing that at all. Then again, it was my first Kohaku viewing back in Toronto after many years in Japan, and the rest of my family has had the penchant to fast forward anything they didn't like. Let's say that I'm the only in the J-Canuck clan that appreciates a good Ringo!😁