Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Yuna Ito - Koi wa groovyx2 (恋はgroovy×2)


http://www.pideo.net/video/xuite/27902eda777932bd/


NOTE: Sorry, but I couldn't find an YouTube link for this song and didn't want to throw the article away. I hope this streamer works well for everyone.


I was a very lucky guy because the first “Music Station” (ミュージックステーション) episode I ever saw, thanks to a friend, was the one which introduced me to Perfume, one of my favorite acts. It was in November 2008 and the girls performed “Dream Fighter”, one of their signature songs. As I was so enchanted by both the girls and the energetic technopop song they sang, I had my friend repeat their performance like four or five times. It represented my second and definitive step into the J-Pop world (the first one was with Megumi Hayashibara [林原めぐみ] and a bunch of 90s anime songs).


But I’m not here to talk about Perfume’s “Dream Fighter”. I remember that in the same episode a singer called Yuna Ito (伊藤由奈) sang this Latin-house pop song called “Koi wa groovyx2”, an winter song that sounds like a summer one. Although I didn’t like it as much as “Dream Fighter”, “Koi wa groovyx2” was also a nice song for someone who was just discovering the mainstream Japanese pop landscape in late 2008. Yuna’s tanned beauty, of course, was a nice plus too. According to generasia, Yuna Ito's ethnicity is half-Japanese, half-Korean. Also, she was born in Los Angeles, California, but raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. Quite an interesting and confuse story, to be honest.

The song is very, very catchy, and I usually don’t like songs that rely heavily in “na-na-na” lines, but I can’t help liking this one very much. Nevertheless its main feature is probably Yuna’s strong vocals, a major characteristic of the girl. Unfortunately, I never checked other Yuna Ito songs, something that I will still probably do someday. To be honest, though, I was kind of discouraged by some love songs and modern R&B infused ones she is well known for. You know, they are not quite my cup of tea.

Her last release to date was a best-of album in late 2010. Being very direct, her releases were not selling as much as in earlier days. “Koi wa groovyx2”, for example, only reached #44 on the Oricon charts, selling around 5,080 copies in total (source: generasia). Lyrics were written by Kenn Kato, while music was composed by Minami Shunsuke (南俊介). As for the arrangement, it was a team work between the same Minami Shunsuke, DJ-PASSION and DJ KANE (source: wiki.jp).



(cover version)

1 comment:

  1. Thanks, Marcos, for this article on Yuna Ito. I only bought one CD of hers and that was the one for "Endless Story", her debut single. So I've only known how she sounds on a ballad. I can understand about the summer/winter schism when I watch the video. Parts of it remind me of the old GAP commercials. :)

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