Akemi Ishii -- Celebration

 

When it comes to the oeuvre of singer Akemi Ishii（石井明美）, I've always pictured her as being someone resolutely linked with the mid to late 1980s. For that matter, her music usually had me thinking Eurobeat or something with some Latin pizazz. "Cha-Cha-Cha" and "L'Amant"（ラマン）come to mind.

"Celebration" is a song that I first heard on a BEST compilation by Ishii so I had initially not known about where it originally came from. It is a coupling song from her 11th single from October 1993, "Anatarashiku Ite"（あなたらしくいて...Stay As You Are） so that is one personal trope broken about her. The other trope broken is that I'd often associate her works with cover versions of Eurobeat songs and "Celebration" sounds as if this would be another one although the arrangement doesn't show off the Eurobeat all that strongly.

However, "Celebration" is a homegrown product with Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）handling the melody and arrangement respectively while Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）is the lyricist. But, as one commenter on YouTube has pointed out, "Celebration" does have some similarity with Cutting Crew's big 1986 hit "(I Just) Died in Your Arms".