Miho Nakayama -- True Romance

It’s not a mystery to anyone that I generally listen to Miho Nakayama’s (中山美穂) 80s aidoru songs way more than to her 90s output. There are many nice songs, mostly ballads or mid-tempo pop songs, like “Tooi Machi no Dokoka de…” (遠い街のどこかで…), “Mellow”, “Shiawase ni Naru Tame ni” (幸せになるために), “Anata ni Nara…” (あなたになら…), “Tada Nakitaku Naru no”, “HERO” and “Thinking about you ~Anata no Yoru wo Tsutsumitai~” (Thinking about you〜あなたの夜を包みたい〜),  that I learned to like through the years, but I still only rarely listen to them. The exception, though, is today’s featured song, which is called “True Romance”, a single released in June 1996.

The thing is, “True Romance” is not so different if compared to what Nakayama was releasing at the time, but I find the arrangement very gentle, in special with the sentimental-sounding piano, horns and light strings. Of course, Nakayama’s womanly delivery is a big part of the show, and if there’s one thing I really like in these later songs in her career is how her vocals matured in a beautiful way.

Days before the single release, “True Romance” appeared in Nakayama’s 18^th album “Deep Lip French”. I don’t really know what type of strategy they were thinking of, since the single simply didn’t sell well after first appearing in an album just days before its release. That’s probably why this song is so underappreciated, even being hard to find on YouTube. The video above was the only performance I could find of it.

Anyway, the single reached #37 on the Oricon charts, selling around 38,000 copies (source: generasia). Lyrics were written by Masato Odake (小竹正人), while music was composed by Yoshimasa Inoue (井上ヨシマサ). As for the arrangement, Hajime Mizoguchi (溝口肇) was the responsible.

For an unknown reason, “True Romance” wasn’t included in my “Perfect Best” compilation of Miho Nakayama’s singles. Because of that, I had to chase my own copy of the single, which I was lucky to find here in Brazil last month.