NOTE: I’m trying something new uploading a video from my personal collection (above). However, if it fails, click here for a link to the short version of the music video on YouTube.
Cute Aidoru Chinatsu Miyoshi’s (三佳千夏) existence was a total mystery to me until few days ago, but I can’t blame myself: her short-lived music career was a total failure that came from Hello! Project in its early days.
This
outdated, yet lovely, song called “Unchain My Heart” served as Miyoshi’s debut
single in August 1999. Everything here is quite nice... from the soft melody
with its bits of melancholy, the arrangement with lots of keyboards emulating
strings, and also the vocals, which loosely reminded me of future Hello! Project
and Morning Musume. member Miki Fujimoto (藤本美貴).
“Unchain
My Heart” conquered a special spot in my heart for three reasons: first, I truly
liked the song very much; second, it’s a lost and rare aidoru tune from the late
90s; third, I just loved Miyoshi’s raw and plain aidoru appeal (that awkward choreography just hit me hard. The sexy lip gloss was also too much for me to handle). Too bad her
career as a singer didn’t take off and she just released three singles.
One more thing. The performance I uploaded is from a live concert called Hello! Project '99 at YOKOHAMA ARENA, which was released in VHS at the time. Even though I only discovered Chinatsu Miyoshi a few days ago, I had this live performance of "Unchain My Heart" hidden in this concert for almost four years. The thing is, since I downloaded it, I only watched Morning Musume.'s performances a couple of times, while ignoring the rest. Shame on me!
One more thing. The performance I uploaded is from a live concert called Hello! Project '99 at YOKOHAMA ARENA, which was released in VHS at the time. Even though I only discovered Chinatsu Miyoshi a few days ago, I had this live performance of "Unchain My Heart" hidden in this concert for almost four years. The thing is, since I downloaded it, I only watched Morning Musume.'s performances a couple of times, while ignoring the rest. Shame on me!
“Unchain My Heart”
failed to chart on the Oricon. Lyrics were written by AKA$AKA, while music and
arrangement were composed by Kaoru Sanada (真田カオル).
 |
| Source: generasia.com |
Chinatsu and "Unchain My Heart" are quite interesting. There seems to be a bit of ABBA in the arrangement, and the singer also has that long-legged look which reminds me of Namie Amuro and Hitomi. Always good to come across these rare tunes.
ReplyDeleteI'm obsessed with Chinatsu. If it wasn't for Perfume's new album next month, I'd buy her three singles right now (apparently, they're still available at HMV Japan after all these years).
DeleteAnd now that you mentioned, there's something of ABBA's "Dancing Queen" in "Unchain My Heart" that makes it even more lovely. Also, the long-legged look was her gimmick at the time. Unfortunately, it wasn't very sucessful in skyrocketing her career.
Nowadays she's married to Korean dude and is a Korean citizen. Lucky guy!
And I still want her three singles, hehe...
Great blog post, thanks for telling me about it (and for writing it) :)
ReplyDeleteI got her three singles from yesasia, can't believe they're still in stock.
I always wondered why no one cared about this idol-girl. I guess she fell a little bit outside as she wasn't produced by Tsunku. Same goes for Sheki-Dol, their first indies single which was stunk-produced got a lot of hype, but after he stopped producing them they just dwindled.
I have some more info about her at http://den-adel.squarespace.com if you wanna check it out :)