Emi Shirasaya -- Kimi no Soba ni（君のそばに）/Mayonaka no Pride（真夜中のプライド）

 

Happy Saturday! Not too bad out there, weather-wise. It may be chilly but the sun is out and the room doesn't feel all that stuffy.

We're starting off with another singer-songwriter that I hadn't heard about but it's someone whose voice I do like. Emi Shirasaya（白鞘慧海）was born in Hiroshima Prefecture but raised in Ehime Prefecture. She began her music career while attending Waseda University in Tokyo, and she debuted under the stage name of Chiemi（千恵美）in 1995 with four singles and one album up to early 1997. But making a switch to another record company, she returned to her original name albeit written in hiragana（しらさやえみ）.

Then in July 1997, she released two singles on the same day, one of which was "Kimi no Soba ni" (By Your Side), a heart-on-your-sleeve love ballad with that touch of old-fashioned class in there. Not only that, but "Kimi no Soba ni" has some major veterans helping out such as Masamichi Sugi（杉真理）on the melody with Katsuhisa Hattori（服部克久）arranging everything as if the song had been made for an old Hollywood movie soundtrack. The lyricist is written down as MACO but touching the link for this person beside the title on Shirasaya's J-Wiki article took me to one Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）!

I also love Shirasaya's resonant vocals on "Kimi no Soba ni" as well as on the coupling song "Mayonaka no Pride" (Midnight Pride). This time with the singer handling the lyrics and Minoru Komorita（小森田実）providing the music and the arrangement, this is some fine light soul which was used as an ending theme for the 1994-2004 NHK-BS program "Mayonaka no Oukoku"（真夜中の王国...Midnight Kingdom） aimed at the young folks, probably in their late teens and twenties considering the lateness of the broadcast starting from at least 11:15 pm.

Shirasaya went over for several months in 2001 to New York City to perform in various venues after which she started her own label and self-produced a new album in 2002. She then converted to Christianity, working as a staffer at a church before becoming a pastor. In 2014, she restarted her music career and is also currently a gospel singer and a voice trainer.