Makoto Kawamoto -- Ai no Sainou（愛の才能）

 

Y'know...when it comes to this song "Ai no Sainou" (Sense of Love), the debut single by Makoto Kawamoto（川本真琴）from May 1996, it's been something that I have heard a number of times before...by several other celebrities on that "Yoru mo Hippare"（夜もヒッパレ）karaoke show on Saturday nights on NTV. Maybe I have heard it done by the original singer but if so, I can't remember when or where. In addition, I only caught the official music video just within the last few weeks, thanks to YouTube.

The song that I will always associate with the Fukui Prefecture-born Kawamoto is "1/2", her big hit 3rd single the following year, and my image of her is that of her dynamic self, her big guitar that she's furiously strumming away on and the mike. So it was surprising to see her cutting up a rug at a party filled with all-too-cool people in sunglasses, and I thought that although Kawamoto was the one behind the lyrics, the song and the video really belonged to the composer of "Ai no Sainou", the one-and-only Yasuyuki Okamura (岡村靖幸...you can hear him at the end of the video). He's the man behind one of the most funkalicious anison of recent times, "Viva Namida"（ビバナミダ）and someone who had also provided Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）with a cool tune as well, "Niji wo Mitakai"（虹をみたかい）some years before. I don't think that this particular song fit perfectly with Kawamoto's style, but that's just my opinion.

"Ai no Sainou" did pretty well on the charts for a debut single by coming in at No. 17 and finishing 1996 as the 94th-ranked single. It's also included in Kawamoto's debut album "Kawamoto Makoto" which came out in June 1997. That release hit No. 1 and sold over a million copies.

From 2:05 above, Okamura does his own cover of "Ai no Sainou" at a concert which was recorded for his 2013 DVD "Mukou Mizu de Ijirashikute"（むこうみずでいじらしくて...Messy Over There）. However, a cover was never recorded for CD, LP, etc. It definitely has a lot more funk.