Mika Nakashima -- CRESCENT MOON

Taking a direct quote from the Wikipedia article, Mika Nakashima's（中島美嘉）2nd single, "CRESCENT MOON" "...mixes 80s style house with disco and Latin pop...".

I guess I could use that description to describe a number of songs that came out during those early years of the 21st century that were sung by some female singers such as Misia and bird. I couldn't really tell about the 80s house music but yep, I could pick up on the disco and Latin influences. The song that I automatically think of is that collaboration between bird and Mondo Grosso, "Life" in 2000.

Anyways, going back to "CRESCENT MOON", this was released in February 2002 as a limited-edition single of only 100,000 copies which ended up selling 98.5% of its stock. Compared to Nakashima's debut of "STARS" just a few months earlier, this was a much more uptempo tune but still with that R&B taste of yesteryear that had me getting her BEST compilation some years later. Written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composed by Hiroaki Ono（大野宏明）, the music video for the song actually showed up on Canada's MuchMusic channel much to my surprise one day when I was back in Toronto for the Holidays. Seeing her up on the screen, I thought that perhaps Japanese pop music might be making its breakthrough into the North American market at last. Well, it actually took a few more years and Nakashima wasn't exactly the spearhead for the movement overseas, but J-Pop did find its niche here.

"CRESCENT MOON" managed to peak at No. 4. The song also got onto Nakashima's debut album, "True" from August 2002. That album hit No. 1 and finished the year ranked No. 8.