Naomi Amagata -- ...tears

 

When I was looking up information for Quincy Jones' masterful 1981 album "The Dude" with the amazing "Ai no Corrida"（愛のコリーダ）, I read somewhere that it had been called the great Michael Jackson album without Michael Jackson. Chuckled a bit at that and understood what the critic meant.

I was thinking about that very response when I was listening to singer-songwriter Naomi Amagata's（天方直実）"...tears". This was her 4th single and the first time I heard it, I swore that it had to have been another ballad at least co-created by Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）right in the middle of his boom years. I mean, it just has that certain arrangement of introspection and rolling beats that I've come to expect from the fellow.

But "...tears", which was released on Christmas Day 1996, was actually written by Amagata and Takahiro Maeda（前田たかひろ）and then composed/arranged by Cozy Kubo（久保こーじ）. It's got a winter setting as a young lady commiserates about what could have been but wasn't in terms of a romance. I guess in a way the song's lyrics were perfect for a Japanese Christmas since a number of J-Xmas tunes take on that melancholy vibe of being lonely during the Yuletide. Interestingly enough, Komuro himself praised "...tears" according to an interview article in a February 1997 issue of the magazine "Schola"（スコラ）.

As for the Tokyo-born and Saitama-raised Amagata, she had auditioned for a position in the Komuro-created group dos but didn't quite make it. However, in a later TV contest, she did receive interest from four companies and in the middle of 1996, she released her debut single "Aitai Kimi ga Inai"（逢いたい君がいない...You're the One that I Want but You're Not Here） via avex trax. Despite the fact that "...tears" hadn't been connected with Komuro, the singer was considered to be a part of the Komuro Family (which included folks like dos, trf and Hitomi) and during that time, Amagata released 10 singles and 2 albums of which some of those songs were used as variety show themes and commercial tunes.

Moving to the United States in 2000, she learned jazz and gospel in New York City, and in July of that year, she even won a prize at the Champion of the Month competition during Amateur Night at the Apollo Theatre.