As I've mentioned before, our Japanese streaming service Jme currently broadcasts NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン） at around 8 pm Japan Standard Time which is actually 7 am Eastern Daylight Time here. Unfortunately, I forgot that today's episode was one of their special longer shows so it premiered at 6:30 which meant we missed the first thirty minutes but I was able to catch up on most of it during the later rerun.
I did manage to catch Crystal Kay for the first time in a long while though. The last time I posted anything about her was back in 2020 just before the pandemic roared in. I never became a huge fan of hers but my memory engrams sparked at hearing her 17th single from May 2005, "Koi ni Ochitara" (If I Fall in Love), the song that she performed on "Uta Con" tonight.
She's usually deeper into the R&B...perhaps more hip-hop, but with "Koi ni Ochitara", it's a bit more of a lighthearted pop love song with a touch of soul. Written by H.U.B. and composed by Misako Sakazume（坂詰美紗子）, the chorus especially has this catchy sing-songy quality that can entrance everyone from kids to grownups. It hit No. 2 on Oricon and became the 30th-ranked single of the year. It was also used as the theme song for the Fuji TV drama "Koi ni Ochitara ~ Boku no Seikou no Himitsu"（恋におちたら〜僕の成功の秘密〜...If I Fall in Love ~ The Secret of My Success）. The song is also available on her 6th album "Call Me Miss..." which was released in February 2006; it scored a No. 2 ranking on the Oricon weeklies and ended up as the 50th-ranked album for that year.
It's been a while since I have heard anything by Crystal kay it is hard to believe it but she started her career back in 1999 about two years before I even set foot in Japan.
ReplyDeleteI remember that she had been a household word in pop culture for a while in my early years in Japan. But beyond the early 2000s, I stopped hearing from her.
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