Along with the Miki Imai（今井美樹）song that I've just put up, Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）is another singer-songwriter from the 1980s and 1990s that I haven't posted about in a good long while. Both artists will always be imprinted into my mind as performers of that particular time and space.
It was only last Friday on the usual Urban Contemporary segment of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" that I noted Yukari Ito's（伊東ゆかり）"Mariko"（マリコ）from her 1982 album "Misty Hour". Well, I've got Mariko Nagai's "Mariko" as well now from her January 1988 second album "Genki Yohou"（元気予報...Energy Report）. To be honest, when I first saw that title for this particular singer, I kinda had this sort of face: 😏 I started thinking if Lady Gaga had come up with her newest song called "Lady Gaga".
But Nagai isn't Lady Gaga through any bit of imagination. Nagai has always struck me as the impish tomboy/country girl type with tons of energy and a soupcon of naughtiness...the type that would suddenly put her hand down someone's back inside that person's shirt and pretend that she just deposited a live frog. Nagai herself came up with the lyrics for "Mariko" with Katsuki Maeda（前田克樹）composing the softly upbeat melody, and I figured that this track from "Genki Yohou" is a sung autobiography about how the singer-songwriter climbed up past all of the self-doubts and setbacks to reach the top of that mountain to success. Nothing wrong with that.
Well, I like this song, and I think the world needs a little bit more positivity. A guess a song like this would never be the first single a brand new singer could or would put out, but a seasoned singer with fans could possibly do a self titled song and get away with it.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think a singer who has established a solid popular reputation can probably get away with naming a song after herself. If she hasn't already done so, maybe Taylor Swift has already come up with "Taylor". 😁
DeleteI am sure Taylor Swift could do so, and no one would blink an eye.
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