Ai Tomioka -- Good bye-bye（グッバイバイ）

 

I've seen the late 1980s as part of the Golden Age of aidoru but also the time of female singer-songwriters who came out with their brand of relaxing pop. Names including Miki Imai（今井美樹）, Midori Karashima（辛島美登里）and Akiko Kobayashi（小林明子）come to mind.

The current age of aidoru is continuing in the early 2020s, although the alphabet aidoru groups have somewhat waned in influence compared to, let's say, a decade ago. However, there are also the non-mainstream aidoru groups that have popped up over the last several years such as BiS and Maison Book Girl. At the same time, I've noticed another group of female singer-songwriters with their distinct sound emerging out of the woodwork. Just in the last week alone, I've come across MAO and XinU for example.

Now for today, it's Ai Tomioka（冨岡愛）. On her Namu Wiki page, I found out that for much of her childhood and adolescence, she had been living in Australia after her birth in Tokyo, and currently, she's now residing in South Korea. Unfortunately, I don't have an exact handle on when she began her music career although part of it was spent busking on the streets, but I was able to find this soothing ballad called "Good bye-bye", about sadly accepting the fact that a guy that she has had feelings for has now been lost to another woman.

Released in 2023, there is something quite country pop with "Good bye-bye" although I'm not sure if Tomioka had meant to make it sound somewhat Swift-ish. Her voice is pleasingly breathy, rich and mellow as if that initially bitter coffee got the cream treatment. Also, the official music video above seems to take things into nostalgia with that opening shot of an old-fashioned tape recorder, a real pool table (instead of one in a video game) and even some of those crane games.

Qa'pla to Tomioka and all those up-and-coming singer-songwriters. It would be nice to have a solid layer of pop again including the guitar pop variety.