Miharu Koshi -- Love Step (ラブ・ステップ）

(karaoke version)

Miharu Koshi is someone that I've wanted to profile for a while now. She's had one of the more interesting careers I've come across in kayo kyoku....not that she's become an award-winning actress or a member of the Japanese Upper House in Parliament. In all those years that I used to browse for CDs in Tower Records, Yamano Music and some of the smaller shops, I often came across her visage on some of her relatively more recent stuff. She appeared as this techno-gamine La Femme Neo-Japonaise with some pretty stark makeup. One of her songs from the 80s popped up in one of my compilation discs, and it was a lively technopop affair with a French twist titled "Hashire Usagi"（走れウサギ....Run, Rabbit). She's also had a long relationship with Yellow Magic Orchestra's Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣） from which they formed a unit, Swing Slow, which took on some old American pop standards. Since then, she's even tackled German avant-garde burlesque.....wow, talk about a niche genre.

However, before コシミハル made the scene in the 80s, she was 越美晴. Koshi made her debut in October 1978 with this lightly sultry pop song with a Latin twist titled "Love Step". I was surprised to find out via "Japanese City Pop" that back in her early years, she had been a lively singer specializing in the Japanese version of AOR. Came across a BEST album that had been released back in 2006 titled "Miharu Koshi Golden Best RCA Years" which showcases her very early material, and so I was able to discover songs like "Love Step".

 Before the metamorphosis, she came across as this lively bouncy young lady on the piano. Listening to the song, I'm kinda reminded of the other New Music singer who specialized in light bossa nova-touched kayo kyoku, Junko Yagami（八神純子）. Koshi's voice, at that time at least, was also somewhat reminiscent of Yagami's although she didn't quite hit the high notes. And like Yagami, Koshi wrote and composed a lot of her music, including this debut.

Guaranteed, I will be showing some of her post-change music as well.

Ｍiharu Koshi