Meiko Nakahara -- Coconuts no Kataomoi (ココナッツの片想い)

Happy Monday! From a number of folks that I've spoken with over the years, it seems that they became J-Pop fans through the anime route; they listened and enjoyed the theme songs for the show and decided to investigate the rest of those singers' output. For me, I kinda got into it through osmosis thanks to my Dad's record collection, the trip to Japan in 1981 with the additional video tapes of music shows, and so on.

The same thing could be said about my relationship with the singer Meiko Nakahara（中原めいこ）. Many anime fans first got to know her through one of the ending themes for the 1980s show "Kimagure Orange Road"（きまぐれオレンジ☆ロード）, the catchy "Dance In The Memories", while in my case, it was listening to her zany and just-as-catchy single "Kimi Tachi Kiwi Papaya Mango da ne"（君たちキウイ・パパヤ・マンゴだね）on one broadcast of "Sounds of Japan".

Well, last night I discovered that a couple of years before her fruit-themed hit, Nakahara had penned another song based on a tropical food, the take-it-or-leave-it coconut (I will happily take it), titled "Coconuts no Kataomoi" (Coconuts One-Way Love). It is a track on her 2nd album "Friday Magic" (December 1982) whose title track has already been featured. Unlike the later speakeasy-friendly "Kimi Tachi Kiwi Papaya Mango da ne", "Coconuts no Kataomoi" has a City Pop (nice bass) beat anchoring the happy Latin vibe. It certainly sounds as if Nakahara had mastered the samba corner of the urban contemporary part of Japanese pop music.

Actually, Marcos V. beat me to it by about a couple of years when he wrote about the cover by aidoru Chieri Ito（伊藤智恵理）.