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I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Saturday, December 14, 2019

Aya Fukuoka -- ONLY X'MAS NIGHT


A little more than 10 days before Christmas, I'm still trying to figure out what to get the family this year. I've got a few ideas here and there but nothing concrete as of yet. Tis the season to be uncertain.


Found this appropriately jingly J-Pop Xmas tune, "ONLY X'MAS NIGHT", wrapped in a wholly pleasant late 80s/early 90s urban contemporary wrapper. Belonging to singer Aya Fukuoka(福岡文), this was a track on her sole album "W-Face" from November 1991. There's very little written about her online, and I found out from this site that she may have only released two singles along with "W-Face", again all in 1991. From one other place, I discovered that Fukuoka had graduated from legendary singer-songwriter Masaaki Hirao's(平尾昌晃)music school. But that's about all I could find about her.

She was apparently marketed as an aidoru and it's the only one song that I have heard so far here, but her vocals and arrangement for "ONLY X'MAS NIGHT" have her sounding a lot more mature than the usual teenybopper. I can only hear this as a mid-tempo 1990s City Pop/AOR number composed by Ichiro Hada(羽田一郎)with arrangement by Yuji Toriyama(鳥山雄司). It all sounds quite cheerful but Goro Matsui's(松井五郎)lyrics relate a melancholy story about a woman who's probably going to spend the Holidays all by her lonesome as it seems a young man who has no idea that she has feelings for him is heading off to be with someone else. Looks like the poor lass will be hitting the Cup O' Noodles hard this December 25th.

I don't know what became of Ms. Fukuoka after 1991 but if anyone can provide any further details, I would certainly be appreciative of this.

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