This was quite the popular song at karaoke in Japan during my Gunma and Ichikawa days. I can distinctly remember the various karaokettes (yep, my own word) singing "Try to love, try to be loved."
Since this was a Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）song at the turn of the decade, "Aishiterutte Iwanai!" (Don't Tell Me You Love Me!) has more of that contemporary uptempo dance-pop beat to it. And considering the title, I could imagine Miporin skipping down a Tokyo street trying to get away from some of her insistent admirers as in a trendy drama. In fact, it was the theme song for one of her star vehicles on Fuji-TV, "Suteki na Kataomoi"（すてきな片思い...A Wonderful One-Sided Love）from October 1990. I never caught the show but I vaguely remember seeing the opening credits with Miho and cast goofing about on screen as they usually do in such a program.
"Aishiterutte Iwanai!" was released as Nakayama's 20th single just a week after the drama premiered. The lyrics were by Yoshihiko Ando （安藤芳彦）and the music was by Hitoshi Haba（羽場仁志）. It peaked at No. 3 on Oricon and ended the year at No. 69 on the annual charts, and even lasted a year later as the No. 85 song of 1991. No wonder my karaoke memories have that song well-embedded.
Hi J-Canuck.
ReplyDeleteThis is probably my favorite Miho Nakayama song from the 90s. It's incredible how Miho-chan still had only 20 years when she recorded this classy pop number. She surely hit the spotlight very early.
My first time hearing this song was in the year-end special episode of Music Station from 1990, where popular artists of the year were invited to sing some hits. Alongside Miho, I remember seeing Akina Nakamori, Seiko Matsuda, Shizuka Kudo, Chisato Moritaka, Wink, Hikaru GENJI and B. B. Queens in the same episode. It was a very interesting lineup.
As for Miho, she sang a medley that included "Aishiterutte Iwanai!", but the sang just the first lines of the chorus, which got me angry because the song sounded very nice. Well, it was not hard to find the full version later, and nowadays I have it on CD as well.