Miina Tominaga -- Kanojo no Kare kara Watashi no Kare（彼女の彼から私の彼）

 

Though I have seen Miina Tominaga（冨永みーな）as a veteran seiyuu and narrator, often on NHK shows, I'm still finding out about that part of her career as a singer. About a year and a half ago, I contributed the first article devoted to her through one of her early songs in the mid-1980s. Incidentally, the above video had Tominaga advertising some sort of seiyuu audition event in which she was one of the judges.

In comparison to the synthpop of "Hito Natsu no Memory"（ひと夏のメモリー）, the topic of that first article, Tominaga's "Kanojo no Kare kara Watashi no Kare" (Her Boyfriend is Mine) straddles the blurry line between 1990s City Pop and straight-ahead brassy pop. A track on her 1991 album "mind", the song has got that sophistication and flair which I've often acquainted with a night out in Tokyo back in the Bubble Era. Love that saxophone in there.

Written by Tominaga and composed by singer-songwriter Shoichiro Hizume（日詰昭一郎）, I don't know what the lyrics are about but with that title, I would think that it would have made for the ideal theme for one of the final trendy dramas on Japanese television. As for Hizume, he played support bass for TM Network and Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎）, but also released a few singles and albums of his own. Sadly, he passed away suddenly in 2001 at the age of 43.