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)