Hideaki Tokunaga -- Wednesday Moon

Well, about a day late unfortunately...

In any case, I remember seeing the commercial for Hideaki Tokunaga's（徳永英明） 11th single, "Wednesday Moon" and thinking "Is he changing direction here?" Because of my viewings of him on the old ranking shows like "The Best 10", my image of Tokunaga was of a young man with those puppy-dog brown eyes who sang those soft-voiced ballads. He probably had high school girls waiting to ambush him outside the recording studio.

But first he had come up with that really joyous single, "Yume wo Shinjite"（夢を信じて）in 1990 and then over a year later, here was this mysterious and moody "Wednesday Moon" with the pop/rock synths. And the video had him channeling his inner MTV with the de rigueur large & empty room with sheets over the furniture. When that angsty choreography was thrown in, I almost had a Simple Minds experience. And strangely enough, that soft rasp in his voice actually worked for some reason.

"Wednesday Moon" was released in April 1991 and was written & composed by Tokunaga himself. It became his first No. 1 single in his career up to that point and placed 62nd in the yearly charts on Oricon.

"Don't mess with me!
I'm packing HIGHLIGHTS!"