Misako Tanaka -- Spain e Ikitai（スペインへ行きたい）

From writing about Jelly Beans' "BLUE" yesterday and finding out that veteran actress Misako Tanaka（田中美佐子）also had her brief time in the recording booth, I found on the right side of YouTube that she had been parlaying her singing even before the late 1990s.

According to her J-Wiki profile, Tanaka released exactly one single and one album in late 1983. "Spain e Ikitai" (I Want to Go to Spain) was the single written by Yu Aku（阿久悠）and composed by Spectrum（スペクトラム）keyboardist Keiichi Oku（奥慶一）. The amazing thing is not just the fact that Tanaka acquits herself fairly well through this fast-paced song of adventure and intrigue but to my ears, she also sounds quite similar to Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）and Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）. In fact, "Spain e Ikitai" sounds just like a tune that early 80s aidoru Akina would have tackled.

I don't know how "Spain e Ikitai" fared on Oricon. Maybe listeners pooh-poohed it in 1983 as someone just copying Miss Nakamori, but for me, it's quite fascinating as an Akina tune that Akina didn't actually record.