“Don’t Stop The Music” is a new song from an old favorite singer of mine: the great Chisato Moritaka (森高千里). In fact, she is the featured vocalist as “Don’t Stop the Music” was used as the lead song for the first major-label single release of tofubeats, a promising 23 years old electronic producer from Kobe (he has already released a full-lenght album in April 2013 called "lost decade").
It’s
interesting to notice that “Don’t Stop The Music”, which was released in November 2013, is the first new song Moritaka
recorded since her comeback in 2012, the year she completed 25 years in the
entertainment business. After the release of a singles compilation, a live
album, a string of successful concerts and the amazing “Moritaka Land Tour”
DVD/Blu-Ray (which somehow wasn’t released in 1990, and just saw the light
after 23 years, in September 2013), it was time to release a true new song. And
that’s the importance of “Don’t Stop The Music” in this moment of her career.
Another very
important factor is that “Don’t Stop The Music” can be seen as a tribute to the
old Chisato Moritaka from the late 80s and early 90s, a time she was releasing
some fun and edgy electronic/eurobeat/disco songs. If I had to guess, I would
bet her comeback would sound more like her mid-90s acoustic stuff, and thank
god it didn’t happen this way. Her collaboration with tofubeats was a really
nice way to pay homage to a time when Moritaka’s music was mainly electronic.
About “Don’t
Stop The Music” itself, it’s a very pleasant light electro house song that also
happen to offer some interesting synth melodies and tame club beats. Moritaka
sounds very warm in the song and the bridge surprises the listener with a nice
acid-house twist that takes the song out of its comfort zone for some seconds.
Overall, great job from both tofubeats and Chisato Moritaka. While the first
proved that he can produce some creative electronic pop songs, the second just
made the fans remember how great she is after so much time. All in all, it
would be nice to see them collaborating again in the near future.
Personally, the only flaw I see is the absence of Chisato Moritaka in the video. It would be very nice to see her beauty in a new music video. Talking about videos, here’s the tofubeats remix of an old Moritaka classic from 1988, “The Mi-Ha” (ザ・ミーハー) (tofubeats video is an edit version of the original video. It’s a lovely music video that also features Moritaka wearing a pair of trousers with a long tail…, well, it were the 80s). Although I didn’t like the result very much (very annoying skippy effects, but tofubeats seems to like this stuff), it was nice to see a promising new producer giving some light to one of my favorite Moritaka songs. In fact, tofubeats himself is a proclaimed Moritaka fan, which is why he decided to invite her for this collaboration. Well, this tofubeats remix of "The Mi-Ha" just made me realize that I miss watching some of my compilations of Chisato Moritaka’s old music videos, and that's what I'm gonna do right now...
"Don't Stop The Music" reached #26 on the Oricon charts. Lyrics, music and arrangement were all done by
tofubeats.
Hi, Marcos.
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing a part of "Don't Stop The Music" and initially thinking Tofubeats was playing around with an old Chisato song....imagine my surprise when I found out that it was actually her collaborating with the guy in 2012 for her first song in many years. She just sounded like her late 80s self! The video with young Chisato and young Tofubeats was also rather cute to watch.
I have to agree that he liked using the "hiccup" button a bit too much when he played around with "The Mi-Ha". Still, it was nice to see Chisato back then again....and 80s music video fashion trends.
Hi J-Canuck.
Delete"Don't Stop The Music" was one of the nicest J-Pop surprises of the last year. Like you said, she sounded just like in the 80s. I just hope she keeps releasing new songs and concerts now that she returned to the business.
And yeah, nothing like 80s music videos. They were so, so nice.