Rie Eto -- Tenshi no Hohoemi（天使の微笑）

 

Up to now, the only time that I've written about singer-songwriter Rie Eto（衛藤利恵）was for her vocal contributions to a Denki Groove（電気グルーヴ）song, the punchy "N.O.", and that took advantage of her very fluent German.

I found her debut single from November 1994, "Tenshi no Hohoemi" (Angel Smile), an elegant if mysterious pop tune written by Sayaka/Yuka Hirota（広田結花）and composed by Hitoshi Haba（羽場仁志）. In fact, I think that it so much of that elegance and mystery, I think that it would have been an ideal ending theme for those Tuesday night suspense dramas on Japanese TV, but the song was actually used as an insert tune for the televised adaptation of the manga "Shizukanaru Don"（静かなるドン...The Quiet Don）.

Up to 2000, Eto has released 8 singles and 6 albums with her most recent single and album coming under her stage name of amber. As I mentioned in the article on "N.O.", she had also participated as the narrator for the entertainment show "Showbiz Countdown" (where I first heard her) and a number of commercials.