Back in October, I finally put Yui Nishiwaki's（西脇唯）name up on the title byline after a number of her songs for other singers had been posted in the past. The official introduction to her voice was via her 1993 "Shichi-gatsu no Ame nara"（7月のな雨ら）.
All that fuss on Nishiwaki was sparked by an album that I had bought titled "Noel〜yui's winter collection〜" from November 1998. I gave it a go but didn't find too many of the tracks all that appealing so it stayed up on the shelves for a very long time. "Noel" wasn't the first album to get that sort of treatment from me; my very first Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）album which was a BEST compilation from her early 1980s period ended up the same way for several years since I couldn't quite "get" what she was about until I finally saw and heard the light.
But first, I ought to at least write some on the song of note here, "Holy Snow", which was Nishiwaki's 9th single from November 1996. It's a pleasant love song about a couple realizing their affections for each other on the ski slopes that was written and composed by the singer. She follows in the footsteps of a number of female singers from that time and a little further back in the late 1980s such as Midori Karashima（辛島美登里）and Akiko Kobayashi（小林明子）, creating these very woolly blanket-comfy tunes.
However, the version that I heard of "Holy Snow" was the one from the aforementioned "Noel" from 1998. The album was a special selection of winter-themed tunes which were given some rearrangement under the producers' eyes of Nishiwaki and Swedish singer Ulf Turesson who has been mentioned in Tomoyo Harada's（原田知世）"Romance" of 1997. In fact, looking at the liner notes for "Noel", it appears that the musicians were all from Sweden, and although it's not made clear in the notes, the assumption is that the album had been produced in that nation.
I remember at the time when I was living in Japan in the late 1990s that the Swedish band The Cardigans were all the rage there, and so some of the J-Pop artists such as Harada and evidently Nishiwaki were seeking out Turesson and Tore Johansson for production help on their songs and albums. "Holy Snow" has retained that quiet and comfy flavour but the "Noel" version has brought in the strings and a laconic guitar to give make things a fair bit woodsier for the lack of a better word. Despite the "Noel" title of the album, not all of the tracks there are about Christmas and "Holy Snow" certainly doesn't hint at December 25th although the winter and romance are in there. The setting could be anytime between December and March.
As for my second verdict on "Noel"? Now that I understand the circumstances behind the album and have more seasoned ears, I actually do appreciate the tracks a lot more and only wish that one other track "Fuyu Yasumi"（冬休み...Winter Holiday） was on YouTube.
Lovely song! This is just a suggestion but there's a 7-member Japanese girl group called XG that debuted in 2022. They're unique in that they're based in South Korea(where they trained and promote on shows there) but they're a pop group who sing their songs in English. Anyway, a little over a week ago, they released a winter-themed song called "Winter Without You" and while it you could fit it for Xmas, it's not really an Xmas song. I wanted to suggest it for a future article.
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