Mutsumi Inoue -- Boyfriend（ボーイフレンド）/Tokyo Tower（東京TOWER）

 

Well, that was the last time I ever used the sparkle function on my old Casio camera while under the influence. Incidentally, that was...barely...Tokyo Tower.

Speaking of one of the megalopolis' prominent landmarks, I have this debut single by singer-songwriter Mutsumi Inoue（井上睦都実）titled "Boyfriend" and its coupling song "Tokyo Tower" from October 1992. I actually first wrote about her last month when I featured her "Nitamono Doushi"（似たもの同志）from July 1994 and that particular number was quite the smooth summery tune and it does distinguish itself from the two songs from Inoue's first single.

For one thing, both "Boyfriend" and "Tokyo Tower" have varying levels of Shibuya-kei in there. There's some swinging jazziness in "Boyfriend" which was written by Inoue and composed by Tsugumi Kataoka（片岡嗣実）from the duo Parquets. The marimba does help too in conveying that Shibuya-kei although I think it's more of a light dusting over a jaunty pop feeling. From what I hear from Inoue's lyrics, it seems like the most cheerful kiss-off of a relationship that I've heard in a while.

At 4:04 is "Tokyo Tower", another fairly rollicking song with some deeper Shibuya-kei imbued in its genes, thanks to Takao Tajima（田島貴男）from Original Love providing the melody this time around, and the marimba is still there along with a happy electric organ. To remind folks, Tajima had also been a vocalist for genre icon Pizzicato Five some years earlier. Inoue also penned the lyrics here. For both songs, Inoue has got some fine crisp and clear vocals as she would for "Nitamono Doushi".

Mutsumi Inoue -- Nitamono Doushi（似たもの同志）

 

Another pleasant surprise from a singer that I hadn't heard of before, Mutsumi Inoue's（井上睦都実）"Nitamono Doushi" (Kindred Spirits) hails from her third and final full studio album "Shiawase na Denim"（幸せなデニム...Happy Denim） from July 1994. For some reason, the album has been categorized as an aidoru creation according to its J-Wiki article, and though I know that I'm just going with this one track, I don't know whether Inoue would be considered a teenybopper singer, at least for "Shiawase na Denim".

"Nitamono Doushi" is a pretty polished summer pop song in my opinion and Inoue shares some vocal qualities with Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）although I don't know whether the former has that boomer quality like the latter. There's also a hint of some West Coast AOR through the keyboards and the wailing electric guitar. "Nitamono Doushi" does have that contemporary 90s sheen but overall I believe that it could almost have been lifted straight from the decade before. Inoue herself wrote the lyrics and she was backed up some pretty solid songwriters as well with Akito Kitayose（片寄明人）from the band GREAT 3 handling the melody and Tatsuya Nishiwaki（西脇辰弥）from the amazing one-and-done group PAZZ being responsible for the smooth arrangement of this particular song as well as the rest of "Shiawase na Denim".

Inoue hails from Kumamoto Prefecture but was also raised in Fukuoka Prefecture, and along with her jobs of being a singer and a lyricist, she was also a model. In addition to those four studio albums, she released five singles between 1992 and 1994 and three mini-albums up to 2001. Finally, Inoue has provided lyrics for songs recorded by singers including Hitomi Shimatani（島谷ひとみ）, Hikaru Nishida（西田ひかる）and Satoshi Ikeda（池田聡）.