Azusa Senou -- I Miss You

CoCo became one of my favourite aidoru groups. They are no strangers to me, as I liked two of their songs, “EQUAL Romance” (EQUALロマンス) and “Yokohama Boy Style” (横浜Boy Style), for quite a while, but it wasn’t until some months ago that I decided to seriously listen to their discography.

Well, everything was okay for the group, but, in 1992, CoCo lost one of its members, Azusa Senou (瀬能あづさ), because she wanted to concentrate on a solo career. Yes, it’s the same old story of leaving your group behind to try new things in the entertainment world.

The thing is, Azusa Senou didn’t have to leave the group in order to have a successful solo career. All of her partners from CoCo had their individual solo careers, with varied success. Also, the cute Rieko Miura (三浦理恵子), without having to leave the group, was even more successful than Azusa.

Based on that, I never really liked Azusa Senou, and the only reason was because she abandoned the group. However, I ended listening to most of her solo material and caught myself liking her stuff A LOT. Maybe I was an hypocrite in this case, but I’m trying to redeem myself here.

“I Miss You” was Azusa’s fifth single, which was released in February 1993. At the time of its release, A-chan, as she was called by her fans, was trying to mature and leave the aidoru days behind. Her first album, “Crystal Eyes”, which was released one year before, in 1992, was still aidoru-oriented if compared to the stuff she released for the second album, “Horizon”. With that in mind, “I Miss You” is a good example of the more pop-rock sound she incorporated for her second full lenght release.

One thing to notice is that, although a solid pop release, “I Miss You”, was not very different from a lot other songs released by more famous artists during the early 90s. This mixture of pop-rock with synths in the background was a common place at the time, and I can even remember one song by minor sexy-aidoru Minako Tanaka (田中美奈子), called “Nemuranai Machi” (眠らない街), with a similar arrangement.

Reality is, the early 90s, as we all know very well, was a very hard time for aidoru acts to establish themselves in the industry. The so-called “Aidoru Fuyu no Jidai” (アイドル冬の時代) was a problematic reality, so Azusa Senou had to try different things to stay relevant. She didn’t accomplish that, but, at least, she tried...

“I Miss You” reached #27 on the Oricon charts. Lyrics were written by Toshihiko Takamizawa (高見沢俊彦) and Yoshiko Miura (三浦徳子), while music was composed solely by Toshihiko Takamizawa. As for the arrangement, it was done by Takebe Satoshi (武部聡志).