Keizo Nakanishi featuring Gospellers -- WITH

I've always thought that Keizo Nakanishi（中西圭三）and Toshinobu Kubota（久保田利伸）were kinda like two peas in a pod when it came to their singing styles with the former tending a little more toward pop and doo-wop. Thanks to my friend and my cousin, I was introduced to Nakanishi's music in the early 90s and I was quite happy with it so that I eventually bought two of his albums "Starting Over" and "graffiti".

I also bought a few more original albums by Nakanishi, but the overall impression hasn't been as great. For example, I listened to "Stay Gold", his 7th album from February 1998, when it first came out but didn't open it again for another 17 years when I pulled it off the shelf today, although I've been quite faithful to my two favourite albums by him. Giving it another try on the player, I just found the majority of the songs to be rather generic.

However, one track "WITH" which features backup by acapella unit Gospellers tugged at my ear, and I gave it another chance by listening to it again. This was another in the long fine line of smooth ballads composed by Nakanishi with J Stack and lyrics by Kanata Asamizu（朝水彼方）who also contributed to a lot of the tracks on "Starting Over". The arrangement and the delivery had me thinking that Sing Like Talking could have also tackled "WITH" with no problem.