Credits

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, January 11, 2020

Keiko Terada -- PARADISE WIND


I don't think this floral logo for the Tokyo 2020 Games exists anymore, officially anyways. This was a poster that I saw in West Shinjuku in the hotel district when I was over there in late 2014, and I think this was something that has since been replaced by the more abstract logos. It's going to be another three years since my last visit to my old stomping grounds in 2017 but I won't be heading over during the craziness of the Olympics since I don't think that there was any way I was going to grab tickets for any of the events and frankly I have no desire to cook at an even hotter temperature than is usually the case during a typical Japanese summer. If anything, it'll most likely be much later in the year.


Speaking of the Olympics, I found another song that was used as the theme for NHK coverage of the Barcelona Games in 1992, "PARADISE WIND", as recorded by Keiko Terada(寺田恵子), at the time formerly of the rock band SHOW-YA.


As I mentioned in the first article for the band, the SHOW-YA vocalist left the group in 1991, and "PARADISE WIND" was her debut solo single released in July 1992. Written by Yoshihiko Ando(安藤芳彦)and composed by Koji Makaino(馬飼野康二)under a pseudonym, Jimmy Johnson, the song has plenty of spunk to get folks excited about all those athletes pulling off medal-winning feats, and it became Terada's biggest hit, peaking at No. 28 on Oricon. The song was also on her debut album "Body & Soul" from August 1992 which broke into the Top 10 at No. 7.

Personally though, I'm still a bigger fan of Maki Ohguro's(大黒摩季)"Atsukunare"(熱くなれ), the NHK theme song for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

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