Miisha Shimizu -- Tip Tap

 

As I was mentioning in the last article, we were watching the sumo variety special on Jme last night and it wasn't just enka singer Konomi Mori（杜このみ）performing. I also got to meet a singer by the name of Miisha Shimizu（清水美依紗）for the first time. She hails from Suzuka City in Mie Prefecture.

Shimizu performed her 10th single from October 2024, "Tip Tap", which was written by SHOW and composed by Mitsu J. It's quite the jive jazz and I got reminded by some of the jump jive and swing that had gotten a second wind back in the 1990s by bands such as Squirrel Nut Zippers. There's also something in Shimizu's delivery and the arrangement that had me thinking of jazz mode Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）. "Tip Tap" was used as the opening theme song for the Fuji-TV drama "Zen Ryouiki Ijou Kaiketsushitsu"（全領域異常解決室...All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Room） which I've read is a series about a special investigative unit which only takes on the toughest cases to crack. I gather that jazz is the genre du jour for this sort of program.

The singer is half-Japanese and half-Filipino which is also the case with her fellow guest, sumo rikishi Takayasu（高安）. As a teenager, she entered a Nagoya audition on the same day that singer Ariana Grande arrived in Japan and won a special award after which she was sometimes referred to as the "Ariana Grande of Mie Prefecture". After attending school in New York City on two different occasions for language and music training, Shimizu made her debut in 2021 with a cover of Brandy's "Starting Now".