I swear that the young lady in the middle of that busking band in Nakano looks a lot like an old classmate of mine. But I've never heard of her ever taking up any musical instrument let alone a banjo so it's most likely not her. 😏
Usually I can always rely on singer-songwriter Misia to come up with something to blow away the blues with her own rhythm and blues although there was a time in the early 2000s when I wasn't paying too much attention to her material since she seemed to only record introspective ballads. I did like her uptempo stuff, too.
And so it goes with "We Are The Music", a track from her 7th original album, the No. 2-ranking "Ascension", from February 2007. It brings back her happy-go-lucky disco feelings and the overall good vibes are almost downright Xmas-y. There's a bit of the song that reminds me of a really uptempo version of one of her most famous hits, "Everything", and that's not surprising since the melody was composed by Toshiaki Matsumoto（松本俊明）, the same fellow behind "Everything". Misia provided the lyrics while Seikou Nagaoka（長岡成貢）arranged "We Are The Music". Nagaoka was also behind the soundtrack for the original OVA for "Shinpi no Sekai El-Hazard"（神秘の世界エルハザード）more than a decade prior.
My favourite era of R&B has always been the late 70s going into the 80s including the soul and Quiet Storm aspects. I've long enjoyed Misia because she has gone into both soul and disco although as I cited above, she got a little too heavy with the balladry for a while in my own opinion. It would kinda nice to have some of that soul return to a larger extent again.
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