For one of the YouTube videos for the singer bird, someone wrote down that if artists like bird actually appeared on the Kohaku Utagassen, he/she would actually watch the NHK New Year's Eve special. That's a personal opinion, of course, but I can also sympathize since I think that bird has been a vastly underrated talent. According to her article on J-Wiki, although her first three albums broke into the Top Ten of Oricon, she's never had a single that broke into that big list; the closest single was her 4th, "Sora no Hitomi"（空の瞳）, in 1999 which peaked at No. 14.
And here is this wonderful number "Kami wo Hodoite" (Undo Your Hair) which was bird's 19th single from September 2004 which apparently didn't even chart. Unfortunately, it isn't included in my copy of "Free Soul Collection" whose picture you see at the top. This is one of those hair-standing-on-the-back-of-my-neck discoveries when I first heard it last night.
It's one of those classy numbers that I can't quite categorize definitively. It seems to weave very comfortably through pop, groove, jazz and J-AOR. But what I can say is that it's just a great song to feel the melody and bird's wonderful voice. It is truly birdsong. And the interesting thing is that bird sings a lot of "Kami wo Hodoite" in this lower register.
bird herself came up with the lyrics of the electricity of falling in love while Takaki Horigome（堀込高樹）came up with the great music. Horigome is one-half of the brother duo Kirinji which came up with the just-as-lovely "Aliens" back in 2000. Wouldn't it be nice indeed to have some of that city groove in the Kohaku?
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