Kirinji feat. Tomomi Oda/Chiaki Takahashi & Azumi Asakura -- LEMONADE

From E4024 via Wikimedia Commons

How does that saying go? When life throws lemons at you, make lemonade!

Apparently, that is the premise for this track from Kirinji's（キリンジ）January 2026 album "Town Beat". The appropriately titled "LEMONADE" is the melodic elixir for all that ails you as prepared by Takaki Horigome（堀込高樹）and served by both him and singer-songwriter Tomomi Oda（小田朋美）in a nice tall glass with plenty of ice. The album also has another collaboration between the two, "Room Dancer"（ルームダンサー）, but unlike the Motown vibe of that one, "LEMONADE" has more of a fleet-footed Neo-City Pop/technopop feeling. At the same time, the harmonies and maybe some of the chords also have me thinking some Steely Dan as well.

When I looked at the J-Wiki article for "Town Beat", I also realized that "LEMONADE" was a cover of a song that Horigome had provided the Idolmaster album "THE IDOLM@STER MASTER PRIMAL POPPIN' YELLOW" from December 2017. This was a duet between seiyuu Chiaki Takahashi（たかはし智秋）and Azumi Asakura（浅倉杏美）as their characters of Azusa Miura（三浦あずさ）and Yukiho Hagiwara（萩原雪歩）respectively. The original here goes a bit more for the technopop but also has a funkier groove. If I had heard this one before the Kirinji and Oda cover and then found out who was behind the songwriting, I most likely would have exclaimed "Oh yeah! That's Kirinji to a T!"