Miho Morikawa -- Real Mind

 

TGIF! For me, when it comes to singer Miho Morikawa（森川美穂）, until recently, all roads have led to her theme songs for the NHK anime "Fushigi no Umi no Nadia"（不思議の海のナディア...Nadia, The Secret of Blue Water), so I've seen her as someone who loves her power pop, and my lone Morikawa album "Pop The Top!" (1991) as you see above in the thumbnail continues to show that.

The last Morikawa article I did was back in August 2020, and I was happy to hear that she also had gone for a downtown party phase in the late 1980s with songs like "Splash Blue" from her "1/2 Contrast" album released in June 1988. Well, she also explored some R&B as well through her later 10th single, "Real Mind" which came out in October that year.

Veteran lyricist Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）, who would also pen the opening theme for "Fushigi no Umi no Nadia", wrote "Real Mind" as this scathing telling of a relationship that has been abruptly stopped by the cad. Bad news obviously, but I can't complain about the funky music by the duo of Hitoshi Haba and Tsunehiro Izumi（羽場仁志・和泉常寛）; will never turn down the offer of a beefy bass and bang-and-crash horns. When I first heard the song, I was rather reminded of the output of another Miho...Nakayama（中山美穂）, to be precise.

"Real Mind" peaked at No. 32 on Oricon and it's been included on her November 1988 5th album "Ow-witch!" whose LP version went as high as No. 16 while the CD peaked at No. 12. That title is quite intriguing, though. It sounds like what Bugs Bunny said in reaction to getting his head banged on something.