Keizo Nakanishi -- Woman

I'm not sure who first cottoned me onto Keizo Nakanishi（中西圭三）. It could've been one of my Osakan cousins who was kind enough to give me a tape of one of his albums, or it could've been one of my friends here in Toronto who may have specifically introduced "Woman"to me. In any case, when I first heard him, his delivery reminded me a lot of Toshinobu Kubota（久保田利伸）. And Nakanishi is more or less in the same genre as well: R&B with a pop touch.

"Woman"was his 3rd single released in January 1992, and it was not only his breakthrough song, but to date, his most successful one, peaking at No. 7 on the Oricon charts. The original title was supposed to have been "Silent Memory" with different lyrics, but seeing that it was going to be tied up as a campaign song for Camellia Diamonds, lyricist Masao Urino（売野雅勇）, who had written tunes for everyone from Hitomi Ishikawa to Jun'ichi Inagaki, came in and overhauled the wording for the Nakanishi composition, and the title was changed to "Woman"to reflect the image of the commercial which was "...the positive-thinking woman".

I especially enjoy the intro into the song as it starts out with a Latin guitar hinting at the main melody before going into a dramatic phase before Nakanishi starts singing. The song was also part of his 2nd album, "Yell", which was released a couple of months after the single, and managed to hit No. 4 on the album charts.

Nakanishi, by the way, was also the composer behind Zoo's catchy "Choo Choo Train" released in 1991 and already written about in this blog.