Miho Nakayama -- Mellow

 

It was a bit odd seeing the latest "Uta Con"（うたコン）on a Sunday morning but the regularly scheduled broadcast on Tuesday had been abruptly cancelled due to a news bulletin. Still, it was good to see the expanded version as the hosts and guests celebrated NHK's century of existence. Plus, there was some poignancy in that enka singer Kiyoshi Hikawa（氷川きよし）was back on the program for the first time in a few years after taking a hiatus and fellow enka singer Yukino Ichikawa（市川由紀乃）also returned after several months away to battle ovarian cancer.

And another big thing was that there was finally a tribute to the late Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）that we had been hoping for but didn't get during last year's Kohaku Utagassen. There was plenty of old footage of Miporin singing on previous NHK music programs which culminated in Hikawa and guest Hiroko Moriguchi（森口博子）performing a couple of her songs on stage.

My contribution to the Nakayama file this time around deals with an album of hers that I saw on sale via the "Eye-Ai" mail order service back in the early 1990s. It featured the singer-songwriter smiling mischievously somewhere in the desert while most of her back is turned toward the camera. Then there was the elegant script of "Mellow", and so the combination was enough for me to part with a money order to get the album.

"Mellow" wasn't only Miporin's 14th album from June 1992, but the title track had also been released as her 24th single earlier in April. To be honest, when compared to the rest of her vast discography, "Mellow" won't be one of my very favourite songs by her but it does stand out as interesting at least for that hard rock guitar and bashing percussion intro before the measured stomp of a rhythm comes in with Nakayama's delicate vocals. Although Yoshimasa Inoue（井上ヨシマサ）was responsible for the melody and arrangement, I think I've heard that same guitar riff in the intro from some other rock song outside of Japan. Nakayama took care of the lyrics under her pen name of Issaku（一咲）. Both the single and the album peaked at No. 3 on Oricon.