Tetsuya Komuro -- Christmas Chorus

 

I believe that this is the first time that I have ever placed a photo of some poinsettia on the blog. It was just sitting by the lobby Xmas tree so I decided to take a shot of it.

Looking at the Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）file on KKP, I realized that it's been around 18 months since I posted anything having to do with the composer and producer with the most recent article being Yuko Tsuburaya's（円谷優子）"Mystery of Sound" back in June 2022. And yet, I remember when I was living in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture in the mid-1990s that Komuro was the music world's king for a few years. Komuro was on the production side of acts such as TRF, Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）, Tomomi Kahala（華原朋美）and was fully into the performance side as a member of the band globe.

Somewhere among those Komuro-associated articles, I've probably mentioned that the man may have been a titan as a producer and songwriter but as a singer, he was a fine producer and songwriter. Nope, I don't think he was ever someone whose vocal cords ever intimidated those of Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二）or Keisuke Kuwata（桑田佳祐）. However in December 1989, he released his first solo album where he was singing titled "Digitalian is eating breakfast".

Well, first let's get the cryptic title out of the way. According to the J-Wiki article on the album, Komuro and company were probably not taking that aspect of the production all that seriously. "Digitalian" was simply a merging of the words "digital" and "vegetarian". Nope, it wasn't any attempt at a clever portmanteau; I gather that it just sounded cool enough to him. However, he also felt that having only that word as the title would have been too stiff so he added the phrase "...is eating breakfast" just to soften things a little. Ohhhhhhhhhhkay. 😬 He kinda laughed the process off a little later in an interview when he said he would have preferred "...is eating hamburger" instead.

Anyways, the final track is "Christmas Chorus" which is up his alley in that it's a twinkly technopop Xmas-themed ditty. Yup, his singing...well, it's frankly a bit strangled but he's mostly on tune and the melody is pretty. Plus, there is a nice touch at the end with the Suginami Junior Chorus（杉並児童合唱団）joining in. Hey, Komuro is wishing all of us a Merry Christmas...can't be too harsh on that!

"Christmas Chorus" was also Komuro's third solo single also from December 1989. It hit No. 2 on the charts and as for "Digitalian is eating breakfast", it reached No. 4 and it became 1990's 45th-ranked album, going Gold.