Miyuki Sugiura/Akiko Yano -- Hana no You ni（花のように）

 

It was a little over a year ago that I finally began the 80s aidoru Miyuki Sugiura（杉浦幸）file with her debut single from 1986, "Kanashii na"（悲しいな）. I noted for that song that the lass from Tokyo possessed some very aidoru-ish vocals surrounded by some pretty lush notes and arrangement by composer Masayuki Kishi（岸正之）and arranger Kei Wakakusa（若草恵）.

Well, her 6th single from June 1987, "Hana no You ni" (Like a Flower) is another catchy number but it's a techno-perky tune thanks to the work of singer-songwriter Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）with Wakakusa helping out on arrangement once more. I'm not surprised that Yano whipped this one up because of her technopop past but I'm impressed by the fact that she was able to create this melody that would fit Sugiura's style to a T.

"Hana no You ni" was used for a Glico coffee jelly commercial, but the version used here sounds quite different from the original version. The song hit No. 14 on Oricon and was included on Sugiura's first BEST compilation "Miyuki STORY"（幸STORY）from December 1987.

When I read that Yano herself had made a cover version of "Hana no You ni", I just had to hear it. As it turns out, she included it on her November 1987 album "Granola", and though it's still quite a breezy tune, it feels a bit more grounded with some of that musical reminder of those early 1980s technopop days.

Miyuki Sugiura -- Kanashii na（悲しいな）

 

On my Twitter feed this morning, I came across an Oricon Top 10 list of Japanese pop songs for March 3rd 1986 as relayed via -3°C from MS-DATABASE. I noted that the Top 9 songs were tunes that I not only knew but were subjects of articles that had been posted up onto KKP over the past dozen years including No. 1 Onyanko Club's（おニャン子クラブ）"Jaa Ne" （じゃあね）and No. 9 "Kuchibiru Network" (くちびる Network) by the late Yukiko Okada（岡田有希子）.

However, No. 10 was a song that I hadn't heard before although the aidoru behind it was a name that I have encountered over the years. I really didn't know too much about actress and former teenybopper singer Miyuki Sugiura（杉浦幸）except assuming that she had been part of the aforementioned Onyanko Club (she wasn't) and she popped up in a number of photobooks. I had long been wondering about getting her on the blog and so finally the opportunity presented itself. 

"Kanashii na" (Ain't It Sad?) is, I have to admit, one of the most aidoru-est songs that I have ever heard, and what I mean is that especially in the first few measures, Sugiura really hits the ears with that off-tune delivery. The song is the Tokyo-born aidoru's debut single from January 1986. Written by Masao Urino（売野雅勇）, composed by Masayuki Kishi（岸正之）and arranged by Kei Wakakusa（若草恵）, "Kanashii na" is a classic example itself of an 80s aidoru song whose vocals may not be spot-on but has that surrounding atmosphere of tasteful music, this time showing that titular melancholy. 

The song hit No. 4 on Oricon, selling 150,000 records. According to the J-Wiki article on "Kanashii na", perhaps there was a bit of sales symbiosis involved here since Sugiura was also appearing in the popular Fuji-TV drama "Janus no Kagami"（ヤヌスの鏡...Janus' Mirror） at about the same time. "Kanashii na" was also on Sugiura's debut album "First" from March 1986. One piece of information that I got from the article regarding her in general was that she was part of a Gosanke（御三家）or Big Three known as the Momogumi Sannin Musume（桃組三人娘...The Three Girls of the Peach Tribe） alongside fellow aidoru Tomomi Nishimura（西村知美） and Nami Shimada（島田奈美） because of their association with the monthly aidoru magazine Momoco.

From the website "Culture Station"