LanLan Suzuki -- Nakanai zoe（泣かないぞェ）

 

I was doing my usual maintenance of the various articles on KKP recently when I came across the September 2016 article I did for LanLan Suzuki's（鈴木蘭々）EPO-penned bossa nova "Kimi to Boku"（キミとボク）. Now, as it turns out, that had been the one-and-only posting I wrote for this tarento that had once been all over television in the early years of my Tokyo/Chiba stint as an English conversation teacher.

In the crowded world of Japanese entertainment with its tarento, singers, thespians and comedians, Suzuki could stand out on her looks alone. She had that short but thick pile of hair, eyes as big as an anime character's, and a quirky personality. For all of her appearances, she had a brief and perhaps uneventful part of her career as a singer although her penultimate single "Kimi to Boku" is a very pleasant tune for the whole family. I did wonder what she was up to in the last twenty years or so and I'm happy to see that she has her own YouTube channel as is evident above. I also read on her J-Wiki profile that she released her first BEST album last year to commemorate her 35th anniversary in show business.

Well, seeing that I've only had the one Suzuki song represented on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I guess it's time to bring another one of her other songs to the fore. Instead of one of her last singles, I'm bringing aboard her debut single from August 1995, "Nakanai zoe" (Ain't Gonna Cry) which sounds like one cheerfully defiant tune with a hint of Motown written by Suzuki and Shin or Makoto Morizono（森園真）. The composer was none other than the late great Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）. Not sure whether that "zoe" at the end of the title is a childish suffix or some dialectal affectation but I wouldn't be surprised if Suzuki had said something like that on one of her shows sometime somewhere. "Nakanai zoe" was used as the theme song for a variety show, "Imada Koji no Shibuya-kei Ura Ringo"（今田耕司のシブヤ系うらりんご...Koji Imada's Shibuya-kei Rear Apple[?]）.

As for the romanization of her first name, I've come across either RanRan or LanLan so I gather that the lady has been rather liberal about how her stage name is read. Her real name is Tomoko Suzuki（鈴木智子）, by the way.