Ai Kawashima（川嶋あい）is a singer and a songwriter from Fukuoka who gained fame as a teen who came up to Tokyo in 2002 with her keyboard to sing on the streets and become known as Rojou no Tenshi（路上の天使）or The Busking Angel. I remember seeing a feature on the Fuji-TV morning show about her as she diligently carried her keyboard to places like Shibuya and Yotsuya to busk up to a thousand times in 2005. In the history of this blog, I'd only mentioned her once and that was because she wrote and composed the opening theme to the anime "Koi Suru Asteroid"（恋する小惑星...Asteroid In Love）.
During that runup from 2002 to 2005 to reach that golden number of 1000, though, Kawashima was already getting CDs produced. The first example of this was through the duo of I WiSH which consisted of Kawashima and composer/arranger Naohiro Sugawara（菅原直洋）. Sugawara had encountered the singer during one of her busking sessions after which a deal was made to create the duo with their names being ai and nao during their existence.
Their first single, released on Valentine's Day 2003, was "Asu e no Tobira" (The Door to Tomorrow), a sweet pop song which managed to stay on the Oricon chart for many months leading to a year. I recall it well since the video was popping up seemingly permanently on the weekly music ranking show "Countdown TV" on TBS with the scenes that I remember being all sorts of people giving ai a peck on the cheek. Meanwhile, folks everywhere were wondering who this lady was with the voice of an angel.
The truth eventually revealed itself as "Asu e no Tobira" hit No. 1 and went Triple Platinum, ending 2003 as the No. 6 single. Kawashima was responsible for words and music while Sugawara and Jun Ozawa（小澤純）took care of the arrangement. The song would also appear on I WiSH's debut album "Tsutae Koboba ~ Namida no Ochiru Basho"（伝えたい言葉 ～涙のおちる場所～...Words that I Want to Convey ~The Place Where the Tears Fall Down~）which was released in October that year, and it would peak at No. 2 and ended up at No. 36 on the yearly album chart. "Asu e no Tobira" would also become the theme song for a popular Fuji-TV reality program called "Ainori"（あいのり...Love Ride） which lasted from 2002 to 2003.
In total, I WiSH released 6 singles and 2 albums up to 2008 along with a couple of BEST compilations. But Kawashima would also start off her solo career in the recording booth just a few months after the release of "Asu e no Tobira", and this has continued to the present day.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to provide any comments (pro or con). Just be civil about it.