Although she had never been on KKP until today, the name Emiri Kanou（加納エミリ）has rung a bell for me for some reason that I can't really fathom. She's an aidoru from Hokkaido who has done everything by herself including the creation of her own songs and choreography. According to her J-Wiki profile, when she was in elementary school, she admired the works of Hikaru Utada（宇多田ヒカル）and wanted to become like her as a singer but realized that wasn't really her style and instead worked on her own way. Later on, she got into electronic music as a high school student, and now considers electropop, New Wave, City Pop and indies rock to be her genres.
In February 2019, she produced and released her very first 7" single titled "Gomen ne" (Sorry). Those 500 singles sold out nationwide. I first came upon it when I was browsing YouTube and saw the music video for "Gomen ne" which included the comment of it being "New Order kayo"! Well, that was quite the statement to a guy who considers the band New Order one of his favourites from his dancing days at the disco, so I was more than interested in giving it a whirl.
"Gomen ne" doesn't go quite as hard as the typical New Order song although I can hear elements in there. And after all, she's an aidoru so there's gotta be the cute and bright twinkles through the synthesizers to reflect that. To be honest, I hear some more of that Stock-Aitken-Waterman Eurobeat in there and the general 80s atmosphere which also permeates the video itself. In fact, watching Kanou perform, I was reminded of a young Chisato Moritaka（森高千里）in her early performances, physically if not vocally.
Speaking of the video, I was wondering who the older fellow was. Well, it's possible that it is her father, Shigeo Mihara（三原重夫）, who used to be the first drummer for the 1980s rock band Rosa Luxemburg. To further pile on the celebrity news, she only got married a few months ago to actor Kuu Ijima（伊島空）.
Kanou's first official single "Friday Night" came out a month after "Gomen ne" in March 2019.
Thanks for sharing this... it's a nice track and video. And likewise it reminded me of Stock, Aiken and Waterman, and Chisato too.
ReplyDeleteAlways a pleasure, Robert.
DeleteI am glad Emiri Kanou didn't try to copy Uta Hikaru, but went ahead and found her niche! Her video really reminds of videos from the 1980's and I love the new wave style (or neo-new wave style?). The energy is great! I see she has has a song called "City Hunter' too, and Itunes has an Extended version of Gomenne and she covered "video Killed the Radio star"!
ReplyDeleteHello, Brian. Yeah, I think it was good that Kanou found her own path in music. It looks like she has had quite a few interesting videos out there over the past half-decade.
Delete