Pizzicato Five/Maki Nomiya & Rainych feat. evening cinema -- Sweet Soul Revue

 

On the April 12th episode of NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）, there was someone on the guest list that I never thought would have appeared on the weekly music show. However, it was indeed the divine Ms. Maki Nomiya（野宮真貴）, the third and the most famous of the lead vocalists for Shibuya-kei royalty Pizzicato Five back in the 1990s. She was there with her good buddy, Ken Yokoyama（横山剣）of Crazy Ken Band (with whom she's worked in the past), to sing something sweet, soulful and revue-ish.

In my own mangled way, I'm trying to say that she and Ken sang their take on "Sweet Soul Revue" which was not only Pizzicato Five's fourth single from April 1993, but also their first single after transferring to the Nippon Columbia label and P5's second single with Nomiya at the mike. As the music video indicates, "Sweet Soul Revue", written and composed by P5's Yasuharu Konishi（小西康陽）, was their tribute to The Staple Singers, the R&B singing group responsible for hits like "Respect Yourself", and when I had heard the audio only in the past, I did think that this song was reminiscent of the soul of the 1960s and 1970s.

Under the music video in the comments section (unfortunately that video has been taken down), I read Jake_Ro_X's description of how "Sweet Soul Revue" became a hit in the Philippines because it had been used as the background music in any television commercials for the anime "Ranma 1/2"（らんま 1/2）. That's one funky backup for a cartoon! Strangely enough, "Sweet Soul Revue" was originally produced for the summer campaign commercial back in 1993 for Kanebo Cosmetics (yes, for beautiful human life!).

The song hit No. 19 on Oricon and was placed as a track on P5's 7th original album "Bossa Nova 2001"（ボサ・ノヴァ2001）which came out in June 1993. One sardonically humourous piece of trivia that I got from the J-Wiki article for "Sweet Soul Revue" involved songwriter Konishi being in the department store Barneys New York in the Big Apple when he suddenly heard this very song being played on the speakers. When he slyly told a salesperson that he had been responsible for the song's creation, the salesperson dryly replied with a whisper of a smile, "Oh, isn't that special?". I'm sure that Konishi learned a valuable lesson. 😝

In early March 2022, a digital single was released for a cover of "Sweet Soul Revue" with Nomiya, YouTuber singer Rainych, who had made an explosion about a couple of years ago with her rendition of Miki Matsubara's（松原みき）"Mayonaka no Door"（真夜中のドアー）, and Neo-City Pop band evening cinema. Perhaps it's been 30 years since the release of the original single, but Ms. Nomiya is still plenty divine.