Up until recently, I had never heard of this singer-songwriter Asqua（明日香）who hailed from Aichi Prefecture but then I listened to her wonderful song which was released as her third single from December 1983, "Blue Lullaby". Thanks to her gentle piano and string-led melody and Yoko Oshita's（大下洋子）lyrics, her "Blue Lullaby" sounded as if it had been created and recorded from at least half a decade prior to its early 1980s release date. In addition, Asqua had a comforting voice that reminded me of the golden tones of Midori Karashima（辛島美登里）who would soon be making her own debut within the next few years.
Born Minako Suga or Kan（菅美奈子）, Asqua took her first steps into a career in music through the annual Yamaha Popular Song Contest in 1981 and then released her debut single in late 1982. She released a total of eleven singles, three albums and six mini-albums. Sadly, her life would come to an end in October 2013 at the age of 49 due to cancer. A couple of live albums were posthumously released in 2014.
Something else that is especially interesting is that「ブルーララバイ」 was also included on Asuka's 1984 album 「おてんばさん」 (Otenbasan). A Japanese record collector's review states that the album identifies both 「花ぬすびと」 and 「ブルーララバイ」 as 新録音 (new recordings). That might suggests that the album version is a different recording from the original 1983 single, although the reviewer could not establish whether the arrangement changed. https://ameblo.jp/80spops/entry-12976265508.html
ReplyDeleteThat may indeed be the case since I saw one comment underneath the YouTube video referring to the album version.
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