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| Pink Sherbet Photography via Wikimedia Commons |
Well, just in time for the weekend, I'm feeling rather buoyant today. The inability to provide comments has been fixed, we're coming out from under the shadow of that crazy storm from Wednesday, and I've gotten my preparations done for my student.
I was browsing through kinuzure's blog "Tamaranaku, AOR Kayo"（たまらなく、AOR歌謡...Irresistible, AOR Kayo） just now when I happened upon one of his entries regarding a singer that I had never heard of before. Ayumi Amano（天野歩美）was once known as Nagisa Amano（天野なぎさ）, one-half of the aidoru duo Kilala & Ulala (キララとウララ) back in the 1980s. Both nikala and I had contributed articles to them years ago. One big bombshell from "Tamaranaku" was that Amano's partner Kanako Ohtani (大谷香奈子) had once been married to Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）!
But getting the train back on the line here, once the act split up, years passed and Amano went solo and she released her first album in January 1992, "Okurimono ga Aru no"（贈り物があるの...I've Got a Present For You）. Kinuzure has described it as an unknown City Pop release (as well as a great girl pop product of its time), but one track "Suki na Mono wa Suki" (I Love What I Love) strikes me as being more of the latter genre. Written by Yoshiko Oga（雄鹿美子）and composed by Katsuki Maeda（前田克樹）, it's a very pleasant mid-tempo number that sounds like something that the aforementioned Komuro or the late KAN would weave, and Amano herself comes across as a more high-pitched and breathy version of Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）. I'd be interested in checking out some of the tracks on the album, especially because kinuzure has highlighted some of them in his article.
For those who want to know: Amano didn't simply disappear. She moved to Los Angeles in 1997 and entered model management, later returning to Japan and founding DIVINE in 2013. As of 2026, her company lists her—under her original name Nagisa Amano—as its representative director. It seems like Ayumi Amano reinvented herself 3 or 4 times over the decades.
ReplyDeleteOkay, but back on topic: Musically, it's a very characteristic piece of early-1990s Japanese girl-pop: bright, melodic, cleanly produced and mid-tempo, with the slightly buoyant keyboard-driven sound that sits between late-'80s kayō, singer-songwriter pop and what collectors now sometimes sweep into the broader city-pop/AOR category. Amano's voice is unusually light, breathy and high, which gives the record a sweet surface without sounding quite like conventional 1980s idol pop. Oh, and J-Canuck makes the very apt comparison to the melodic pop worlds of KAN and Tetsuya Komuro, and describes Amano's singing as somewhat reminiscent of a higher, breathier Misato Watanabe.