Hiromi Asai -- White Snow

 

With the many bands of different stripes emerging onto the J-Pop zeitgeist in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it can be easy to overlook the fact that there was also a plethora of female singers of refined and mellow pop songs during that time as well. I'm thinking of ladies such as Miki Imai（今井美樹）, Midori Karashima（辛島美登里）and Kaori Kuno（久野かおり）.

I discovered another such singer recently. Her name is Hiromi Asai（淺井ひろみ）although over the last decade or so, she's been going just by her first name in all caps, HIROMI. Hailing from Ehime Prefecture, she started out in 1981 by winning a contest sponsored by the Yamaha Music Foundation and from that point, Asai was helping out the hit duo Chage and Aska in the recording booth. Later in 1988, she made her first solo single and album, and in the following year, she was invited by Chage to join him in a new band called Multi Max.

"White Snow" made its first appearance in her November 1993 3rd (mini-)album "Dear Friends", and it was given lyrics by Eriko Wakiya（脇屋恵理子）and composed by Hiroto "Kanji" Ishikawa（石川寛門）with veteran Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）, another long associate of the Yamaha Music Foundation, arranging everything. "White Snow" is truly a soothing and uplifting ballad with a sweeping melody and an arm-in-arm background chorus at the end for that sentimental touch. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been used as the theme song or even as an insert song for some drama. Considering the title and the release date of "Dear Friends", perhaps it may even be a Holiday tune of sorts. According to her J-Wiki biography, the song was released as a single in November 1996.