Megumi Shiina -- Konya wa Angel（今夜はANGEL）

 

Last week, I mentioned about watching an old episode of "The Best 10"（ザベストテン）which commemorated the 8th anniversary of the TBS music ranking show in 1986 (unfortunately, couldn't find any footage of that on YouTube). Instead of its usual hour, vivacious host Tetsuko Kuroyanagi（黒柳徹子）took care of the program for 90 minutes and frankly, the set looked like a combination of the Jerry Lewis Telethon and Election Day headquarters as the equivalent of a small village of phone operators stood by to take in requests by viewers section by section throughout Japan to show some old footage of their favourite artists. As a result, there wasn't the usual rundown clatter of the countdown shingles and none of the performances. How could anyone perform among that racket?

Still for some reason, Kuroyanagi, her co-host and one staffer had one singer come on, Megumi Shiina（椎名恵）to sign an autograph since she did get onto the Best 10 list for that week. But for the rest of those 90 minutes, they just had the poor lady sit around without saying a word which was a pity for her and her fans. I thought that was the reason that any talk show has a Green Room backstage.

The song that got Shiina onto that episode of "The Best 10" was her debut single from New Year's Day 1986, "Konya wa Angel" (Tonight An Angel). Now, I've known Shiina more for one other song which was released later that year, "Love Is All: Ai wo Kikasete"（愛を聴かせて）, and that was actually a cover of Charlene's "I've Never Been To Me" , the mellow theme song for the 1982 movie "Paradise" with Phoebe Cates.

And for those eagle-eared 80s music-loving fans, "Konya wa Angel" is itself a cover. It just happens to be the Japanese version of "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young" by Fire Inc. on the soundtrack for the 1984 rock musical film "Streets of Fire". Wow, that movie takes me back. In any case, Fire Inc. is actually the combination of the voices of Laurie Sargent and Holly Sherwood for Diane Lane's rock singer character of Ellen Aim.

Well, I'm glad that Shiina could sing on TV elsewhere. Her "Konya wa Angel" was given Japanese lyrics by the singer herself and Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）over the original Jim Steinman melody. It was used as the theme song for the Fuji-TV drama "Janus no Kagami"（ヤヌスの鏡...Janus' Mirror）, and earned a top ranking of No. 7. It finished the year as the 27th-ranked single and was also placed onto Shiina's debut album "Miss You" which came out a couple of months following the single.

Interestingly enough, although I stated that "Konya wa Angel" was Shiina's first single, she had actually released a prior single under her real name of Chisa Oikawa（及川ちさ）back in August 1983, "Piiman Kiss"（ピーマンキッス...Green Pepper Kiss）. With a title like that, I can only imagine that she may have started out as an aidoru. But getting back to "Streets of Fire", I'm going to have to devote another song from that movie to a ROY article fairly soon since that became a huge hit.