Shoko Aida -- Jóia

In my first entry for Kayo Kyoku Plus, I decided to talk about “Jóia”, the second single from Shoko Aida’s (相田翔子) post-Wink career, released in April 1996. “Jóia” is a typical “bossa nova” styled song, and although I’m Brazilian, I don’t quite listen to “bossa nova” or “samba”. “Jóia”, in the other hand, is a song that I enjoy a lot, so let’s check out the reasons.

First of all, some translation notes. If the reader is curious, “Jóia”, in Portuguese, means jewel. And the phrase “de noite eu espero por você”, repeated by the backing vocalists in the last minute of the song, means “I wait for you at night”.

So, talking about the song itself, I can tell that Shoko’s vocals were very beautiful, and if the reader is a Wink fan, you can agree with me how much her voice had matured if compared with Wink’s first smash hit, “Ai ga Tomaranai ~Turn It Into Love~” (愛が止まらない), released in 1988. It’s important to notice, of course, that in “Ai ga Tomaranai ~Turn It Into Love~”, Shoko’s vocals were young and innocent, something very welcomed and necessary in aidoru singers.

Even though Shoko’s vocals are, for sure, one of the charming points of “Jóia”, the soft melody contributes a lot to the whole atmosphere.

I firstly came across this song when I discovered Wink some two years ago (not a long time). After becoming a big fan of the duo, I started checking both girls solo efforts. I remember listening to this song a lot while traveling. Don’t know why, but it’s a good travel song. Maybe the beautiful melody combined with Shoko’s voice was something pleasant to hear while relaxing in a traveling bus.

The PV is simple, but the song doesn’t ask for anything really elaborated. Shoko’s beauty is enough for me in the video.

The single failed to chart on the Oricon (source: generasia) and we can surely understand why. Besides being a beautiful “bossa nova” styled song, “Jóia” doesn’t quite match the requisites of a J-pop hit song of the year 1996. We can’t tell, but Shoko was probably aware that it was not going to climb high on the charts. But she surely wanted to try out this type of sound, as an entire “bossa nova” album, called “Jóia” (same name of the track, I know), was released one month after the single. And maybe I’m more worried about the Oricon charts than Shoko herself was at the time. Who knows? Even Wink’s last singles were poorly received on the Oricon charts, but that’s something we can discuss better in other article.

“Jóia” was written by Shoko Aida and Rui Serizawa (芹沢類). The music was composed by Shoko herself and the arrangement was put together by Robbie Buchanan (source: generasia).

To end this post, I decided to share one of my favorites renditions of "Ai ga Tomaranai ~Turn It Into Love~" in which Shoko Aida sings it live without her Wink partner, Sachiko Suzuki. This footage is from 1997, one year after Wink's official disbandment.