Akina Nakamori -- Kita Wing （北ウィング）

I've been going with Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜） mid-to-late 80s hits recently, so I've decided to go back a bit to her earlier aidoru period. There is something about "Kita Wing" that whenever I listen to it brings a shiver down my spine. Now, I'm an Akina fan from way back so the physiological effect is just purely me but there's just something about her voice and the arrangement that makes her 7th single stand out.

Her first 6 singles since her debut in 1982 either tended towards plaintive ballads like "Second Love" or tsuppari pop/rock such as "Shojo A"（少女Ａ）. However, when it came to "Kita Wing", there was something of a new third musical approach: that of a more mature and spirited romantic feeling. It was neither a gentle love song nor a guitar-shredding shrieker and Akina is not wearing a school uniform of either a good girl/bad girl. She's sporting a fashionable blouse and tan skirt as she runs breathlessly through Narita Airport (my description is merely the coffee in my veins talking here).

"Kita Wing"(North Wing) refers to Terminal One (try the kaiten sushi restaurant a couple floors up from Departures....good stuff) of the formerly named New Tokyo International Airport in Chiba Prefecture. Chinfa Kan's（康珍化） lyrics has Akina deciding to throw caution to the wind and rushing off for that flight to be with her significant other on the other side of the Pacific perhaps, with a mix of giddy excitement and not a little trepidation. Meanwhile, Tetsuji Hayashi's（林哲司） melody starts off intriguingly like a tango before Akina's "Love is the mystery...." and the combination of soaring strings and brisk keyboards sweeps the song along into adventure. Kan and Hayashi were also the team behind Anri's（杏里） disco "Kanashimi ga Tomaranai"（悲しみがとまらない） and a number of Omega Tribe's early summery hits such as "Summer Suspicion", so "Kita Wing" has that hint of an adult atmosphere, though I wouldn't quite place it in the City Pop/AOR category per se, but your opinion may vary.

According to the J-Wiki entry for "Kita Wing", apparently it was Akina herself that suggested the title when the powers-that-be had been thinking of other recommendations such as "Midnight Flight"and "Yakan Hiko"（夜間飛行...Night Flight）. Also, the song itself had gotten some inspiration in its inception from Yumi Arai's（荒井由実） "Chuo Freeway"（中央フリーウェイ）, due to the feeling of freedom and out-of-the-ordinary adventure that the Yuming classic had been based upon. I think listening to the song brought a bit of summer heat to a lot of ears and hearts considering that it was released on New Year's Day 1984.

The critics also didn't let this song get past their attention as it picked up a number of prizes, including one from The Japan Record Awards and a prize from The Japan Songwriting Awards. On Oricon, the song peaked at No. 2 and would become the 9th-ranked song of the year, selling around 600,000 records, and being one of three Akina songs to get into the Top Ten. "Kita Wing" was also a track on her 5th album, "Anniversary" released a few months after the single in May. It went to the top spot on the charts.

Arguably, the technopoppy previous single of "Kinku"（禁区） could have been the impetus for Akina Nakamori to push into this third way. But I think "Kita Wing" also had a hand in starting that gradual transition in her career from aidoru to pop superstar.

Akina Nakamori from one of my "Myojo" song books.