Miho Nakayama -- I Know

(karaoke version)

Miho Nakayama's（中山美穂）"Miho's Select" is an album of her BEST hits that was released on Christmas Eve 1991. When I saw a picture of the CD in the "Eye-Ai" CD shopping list for one issue, I was struck by the cover with the artistically overexposed image of Miporin sitting down on some street in what looked like a European city as she gazed upward to the sky. I was back in Canada at that point after 2 years in Gunma, and remembering that time period as the one which finally drew me in as a casual fan of hers, it didn't take much thinking to decide to write out that money draft to acquire that disc along with one or two others.

As mentioned, "Miho's Select" consisted of her hits which included "Rosa" and "You're My Only Shinin' Star". However, another song, a ballad, caught my attention as well. Titled "I Know", I initially assumed that it had been a relatively new song (at that time) past 1990 since the arrangement was about as non-aidoru as could be for Miporin. Rui Serizawa's（芹沢類）dreamy lyrics about finding love and the late Cindy Yamamoto's（シンディ山本）mature Latin-flavoured melody had me wondering if this had been a track from one of the singer's albums from 1990 or 1991. In actual fact, though, "I Know" was a ballad from her 7th album released in July 1988, "Mind Game". Unlike Miho, I didn't know.

When it comes to "Miho's Select", "I Know" is the song that I always associate the album with. Not that the other tracks are bad at all....they are her hits, after all. But that soft bossa ballad somehow left something more permanent within my engrams. And for me, for whatever reason, I've usually been drawn to Miho's more mature ballads such as "Midnight Taxi".