Up until I started doing this blog, I had only known Naomi Akimoto（秋本奈緒美）as an actress and a TV personality. It was through YouTube that I discovered that she'd also been a singer, and according to her J-Wiki profile and the writeup about her on "idol.ne.jp", she grew up with jazz because of her father's love of the genre and the performances of Sarah Vaughan, notably her "Misty". So, she began her career as a jazz singer.
I was always getting confused by that third album of hers "The 20th Anniversary" from December 1982 since I was always going "She doesn't look THAT old!", but the powers-that-be were probably just trolling fans at the time because the title actually refers to the 20th anniversary of her birth. Akimoto was just on the cusp of her 20th birthday (January 13th 1983) and her official entry into adulthood. It's on that album where you will find the one track that was also her debut single, "Silent Communication". It had been released a couple of months earlier.
Those first several seconds had me wondering what kind of song I was going to get; was it going to be tropical or even synthpop, but the rest of it was some good ol' swing jazz thanks to composer Abraham McCrory with Tomoko Aran（亜蘭知子）supplying the lyrics. Breathlessly delivering "Silent Communication", I was getting some Marilyn Monroe vibes and "I Wanna Be Loved By You". Considering the jazz in there, I had assumed that the song would be used in some sort of commercial for whiskey, but actually it was used to advertise a Glico chocolate brand called Dione (the commercial above actually has Miki Asakura singing instead).
Along with "Silent Communication", "The 20th Century" also has "Bewitched" which was the first Akimoto song that I had posted a few years ago.
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