Misia -- Tsutsumikomuyouni （つつむ込むように）

I remember seeing the original music video for Misia's debut in 1998 and thinking, "What a really interesting (and I mean that in the best way!) looking woman....and that voice!" I mean, she had the face of a Japanese doll underneath dreadlocks.

Misia (aka Misaki Ito) was raised in Nagasaki Prefecture and Fukuoka. She fell in love with gospel music and was given training in the genre, but her talent had already been there via a 5-octave vocal range. Her debut single, "Tsutsumikomuyouni" (As If All Wrapped Up) showed that from the get-go when the first notes out of her mouth were those high-pitched ones. After that, the song was an ear-friendly R&B tune which got my shoulders shimmying and my toes tapping, albeit with far less expertise than those dance guys in the video (one of whom ended up becoming an EXILE member).

According to the Wikipedia write-up on her, when the CD singles first started selling in February 1998, the two formats available at the time (8 cm and 12 cm) were considered different by Oricon at the time, and so the rankings had them at No. 11 and No. 20 respectively. If they had been counted as one format, as they eventually were from 2001, the single would have peaked at No. 8, 2.5 months after its initial release. But weep not for the petite Ms. Ito....her debut album, "Mother, Father, Brother, Sister", released in June of that year, debuted right at No. 3 and then hit No. 1 and proceeded to stay in the Top 5 for the next 11 weeks. It became the 7th-best selling debut album of all time in Japanese music history, and the 37th-best selling album, period. Plus, it got the Japan Record Award for Best Album. Oh, yeah....and 2.5 million albums sold. Indeed, weep not. And that was just the beginning.

Just as a postscript, my incentive to write about Misia came a day after the passing of Donna Summer. I think Ms. Summer had a pretty big influence on female R&B singers...on both sides of the Pacific.