Yes, I do realize that Urban Contemporary Friday was yesterday but I just can't help but put this one up tonight. After the Blogger technical kerfuffle earlier this afternoon, I think I want to post up something especially fun.
It looks like one of the premium City Pop songs to be absolutely adored and devoured by a lot of people inside and outside of Japan, Miki Matsubara's（松原みき）"Mayonaka no Door"（真夜中のドアー）, aka "Stay With Me", has become the gift that has kept on giving. The list of cover versions on the J-Wiki article for the 1979 hit is beginning to appear like an annual Kohaku Utagassen lineup. A few years ago, I even wrote on Yuko Imai's（今井優子）funk n' groove n' sophisticated pop take on the song which she released as part of her 2016 album "Sweetest Voice", a few years before "Stay With Me" exploded onto the international scene.
A couple of slaps on the head later earlier this month made me realize that Tokimeki Records isn't a recording company. It is the name of a music unit which started up in 2019 that specializes in cover songs originally done by singers from the 1980s and 1990s. The group immediately sprinted out of the gate with their cover of that other City Pop hit "Plastic Love" in August 2019. But then a few years later, in June 2021, Tokimeki Records brought singer Hikari (one of a number of singers who have contributed to the unit's projects) on board to record their version of "Stay With Me". And it's another barn burning banger of a cover with a bit more of a dance club flavour infused into the original arrangement by Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）.
This cover is decent, but it also sounds like it is trying to be a bit of an R&B version of the song. There's nothing with that as it does make me want to get up and dance to it and it is pretty faithful to the original. However, I think I would like to see a cover that emphasizes more of the jazz highlights of the song. Actually, I also wonder if there was a disco version or cover of the song.
ReplyDeleteThe list of those covers on J-Wiki is pretty long so perhaps one of them might be taking a jazzier approach. However, what I'm finding is that from the few covers I've heard so far, no one has really pushed the envelope in terms of any new arrangements.
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