Friday, September 6, 2013

Megumi Mori -- Tokio Town (東京街)


Just to inform you, since there are two Megumi Moris in the Japanese music industry: one born in 1969, the other born in 1985, I'm talking about the former. This Megumi Mori (森恵)was an actress/singer/tarento during the 80s and early 90s and currently a lyricist.

I was scrounging around my dusty cabinet and came across an old compilation tape that I'd bought in Chinatown back in my U of T years. The first track on it was Mori's 3rd single, "Tokio Town", a cover of "Tokyo Town" by a singer named Sarah, released in 1986. I'm only guessing at when the Mori cover came out since information on dates is very sparse on the Net; since her singing career started in 1986 with "Yume Miru Dance Away"夢見るダンス・アウェイ...Dancing Away While Looking at a Dream), I'm just extrapolating that "Tokio Town" came out very late in 1986 or in 1987.

Originally composed by someone named B. Wilson and with Japanese lyrics by Hitoshi Shinohara(篠原仁志), "Tokio Town", and the tape itself, got quite a lot of heavy play during those all-nighters in my room, and especially on one road trip to Chudleigh's Apple Farm, about an hour's drive away from Toronto, when I decided to bring in some musical entertainment to my friend's car (all of my buddies were Japanese). Refreshing my memory by listening to the YouTube video, I kinda wonder if this was the first Japanese Eurobeat song I had come across or whether Akemi Ishii's(石井明美) "Cha-Cha-Cha" beat it to the punch. In any case, it had quite the dynamic touch...a nice way to start the tape.


Mori's single went no higher than 36th place on Oricon, so it wasn't a huge hit by any means. But I'm sure there are probably a number of high school and university students in Japan from the 80s who would go "Natsukashii na...." on hearing it. I came across an extended remix of the song above.


And last but not least, here is the original by Sarah.

The 80s compilation tape
The lyrics for the song can be found at kget.jp.

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing.
    I listened a song named "Kanojo" (彼女), is it another single? Or does it belong to another album?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello, Oz.

      My pleasure here. Yes, indeed it is another single by Mori. In fact, it is her final single to date from 1990.

      Delete
    2. Thank you!
      I didn't know about her (short) career as singer, I just knew her from the show she starred, Liveman.
      By the way, I listened another one: Hoshi no Namida.

      Delete
  2. Where can I find the Japanese lyric ?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello, Justin.

    I've put up a link at the very bottom of the article which will take you to the lyrics.

    ReplyDelete
  4. hola un favor me podrias subir en un servidor de mediafire este video clip es su estado normal --Tokyo Town (Subtítulos en Español)1986 la Ciudad de Tokio Hi Energy " Megumi Mori "

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello, fabian. I don't speak any Spanish but if I translated your comments correctly, I think you wanted a video clip uploaded to a Mediafire server. Unfortunately, I don't think we are capable of doing that here. My apologies.

      Delete

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