Chika Nakamura -- Too Young

Wowzers! When I heard this one for the first time, I was immediately taken by the snazzy melody. It was rather bracing in a good way like morning OJ. At first thought, without making the effort to track down songwriters, I thought it was either Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）or Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）who composed the song because of the snappy drums and that certain synthesizer sound.

However, actually it was singer-songwriter EPO (should've known) behind "Too Young", a track from Chika Nakamura's（仲村知夏）debut album "100 Carat" from April 1988. With Shun Taguchi（田口俊）taking care of the lyrics, this is a pretty catchy non-single cut that flits about like a bumblebee above a clover patch for the right amount of time. Not too long, not too short.

Nakamura, whose real name is Chikako Nakandakari（仲村渠睦子）, hails from Okinawa and started out as an aidoru in 1988. According to her J-Wiki profile, she admired Rebecca's NOKKO and entered the Okinawa Actors School to train in singing and dancing. She didn't have any major hits with most of her 9 singles flitting between the low 30s and high 20s on Oricon. There were also 3 original albums between 1988 and 1989 with only "100 Carat" getting the highest ranking at No. 74, and by 1991, Nakamura decided to call it a short career.