Tsubasa Imamura is a very special singer. Although Japanese, she loves Brazil, the country where I was born and live. Many of her songs are inspired in Brazilian pop-rock or Bossa Nova, and she’s also learning Portuguese. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend her concert when she came to Rio de Janeiro a couple of weeks ago. I’m still kind of sad that I couldn’t watch her live, but the fact that I was able to buy her CD a couple of days later made me feel better.
I confess that Tsubasa is very diffent from the kind of artist I usually listen. She is not a polished aidoru artist, nor a classy City Pop singer, but something about her just caught my attention.
I had two options of songs here. One was the Bossa Nova styled “Hadashi no Shoujo” (click here), while the other, my chosen one, was the ballad “Singular” (means unique), which is a special song Tsubasa composed part in Portuguese (verses) and part in Japanese (chorus). All in all, it’s an introspective love song with nice passages like “Simplicidade é o tom. É como aquele disco de vinil tocando o nosso som... Você mostrou o lado A de tudo o que eu sou, e o lado B a vida me ensinou” (Simplicity is the tone. It’s like that vinyl record playing our song... You showed me the A-side of what I am, and the B-side life taught me). In the end, what I really like about Tsubasa is her soft voice. Well, it looks like she’s singing especially for the listener. Like I said, her music style is not what I listen to non-stop, but her voice is something very special. I really hope she comes back to Brazil soon.
On a side note, I had a chance to participate in a live chat with Tsubasa a couple of days ago. I asked who was her favorite Japanese female singer and her answer was Seiko Matsuda (松田聖子). Not bad for the “eternal aidoru” Seiko-chan.
“Singular” was recorded in 2013 and was included in Tsubasa’s album “por você” (means for you), which was released in Brazil in July 2014. Tsubasa worked on the song with Robert Regonati.
To finish, here's a photo of the "por você" CD. It came with a beautiful poster as well.
