Over the 23 years of Akina's career, I've heard her as an aidoru singer, a pop superstar who started diverging into more esoteric fare in her albums while still providing ratings-friendly singles, and then as a husky-voiced chanteuse. "unfixable" seems to be another bend in the road with her trying out some R&B in English no less. The song was created by the trio of Hilde Wahl, Tommy Berre and Marietta Constantinou, and it's definitely more compelling in its sound than in her previous single back in January, "Rojo Tierra" which I can't remember anymore despite Akina getting that appearance in last year's Kohaku Utagassen. I'm not sure, though, whether this would be the sign for me to get fully back into the Akina fandom, but if she decides to release a full album in the near future, I would be interested in hearing about she handles this new direction. I would certainly be looking forward to some uptempo fare.
I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Akina Nakamori -- unfixable
Over the 23 years of Akina's career, I've heard her as an aidoru singer, a pop superstar who started diverging into more esoteric fare in her albums while still providing ratings-friendly singles, and then as a husky-voiced chanteuse. "unfixable" seems to be another bend in the road with her trying out some R&B in English no less. The song was created by the trio of Hilde Wahl, Tommy Berre and Marietta Constantinou, and it's definitely more compelling in its sound than in her previous single back in January, "Rojo Tierra" which I can't remember anymore despite Akina getting that appearance in last year's Kohaku Utagassen. I'm not sure, though, whether this would be the sign for me to get fully back into the Akina fandom, but if she decides to release a full album in the near future, I would be interested in hearing about she handles this new direction. I would certainly be looking forward to some uptempo fare.
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Like me, I didn't like 'unfixable'. But the b-side '雨月' is a great ballad!
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