Tomoyo Yoshida -- Ai made Todokanai（愛まで届かない）

 

Well, it looks like we have our third Tomoyo to join Tomoyo Harada（原田知世）and Tomoyo Kurosawa（黒沢ともよ）on the blog. The new kid on the block, so to speak, is Tomoyo Yoshida（吉田朋代）who is a singer-songwriter from Iwate Prefecture. One other observation is that she looks like she could be a sister to Kahoru Kohiruimaki（小比類巻かほる）.

Debuting in the mid-1990s, she came out with her 7th single in May 1996, "Uso da to Itte"（嘘だと言って...Tell Me It's a Lie） but I wanted to use this space to highlight the single's coupling song "Ai made Todokanai" (Doesn't Get to the Level of Love). It's a nice slice of 90s City Pop or maybe it can be treated as some nicely dynamic pop. There's something about the synthesizer work that screams urban contemporary, though. Written by Yoshida and composed by Minoru Komorita（小森田実）, it's a pretty upbeat song about heartbreak.

Beginning her career in music during her teens, Yoshida has been a radio personality and a singer in commercials. Up to 1998, she released 10 singles and 2 original albums. In 1997, she passed an audition to get into Toshiki Kadomatsu's（角松敏生）project "VOCALAND 2", and in 2001, she joined up with veteran composer Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）and musician Cheep Hiroishi（チープ広石）to form the band Grunion, according to her J-Wiki profile.