Yuki Uchida -- Heartbreak Curry（ハートブレイク・カレー）

 

Yes, nothing like a heaving plate of Tandoori Chicken, Butter Chicken Masala, Saffron Rice and salad at Aroma downtown. That's what an Indian restaurant buffet will get you. I was happy for the ice cream afterwards, though.

It was good that I did take pictures at Aroma back during the Toronto International Film Festival a couple of months ago, so I can use one of them for this food-based tune by actress-singer Yuki Uchida（内田有紀）. From her first studio album released in February 1995, "Junjō Karen Otome Moyō"（純情可憐乙女模様...Innocent and Lovely Maiden Pattern）, I give you "Heartbreak Curry" (although I would usually think of heartburn curry).

Anyways, this pop-rock song of lost love has the protagonist making up some curry in the kitchen to conceal her feelings of romantic devastation. Peeling all of those onions and stirring over a hot pot of curry can help to hide those tears and despair sweat. Mind you, since I do adhere to the philosophy that a bad day or bad news tends to have employees focus more effectively at the work at hand, Yuki's curry will probably become one really tasty dish on the dinner table. Mami Takubo（田久保真見）was behind the lyrics while Masatoshi Sakashita（坂下正俊）was the composer. As for the album, "Junjō Karen Otome Moyō" hit No. 1 on the Oricon weeklies.

Yuki Uchida -- Getsuyoubi no Asa（月曜日の朝）

 

The last time I heard about singer/actress/model Yuki Uchida（内田有紀）was when she became a late addition to the cop comedy-drama franchise "Odoru Dai Sosasen"（踊る大捜査線）. However, my memories of her are usually restricted to her appearances in commercials, music videos and dramas of the 1990s. In a way, I saw her as the 90s version of Kyoko Koizumi（小泉今日子）: a young, short-haired and sassy woman. The singing part of her career was often paired with the Komuro Steamroller as I like to call it when producer and songwriter Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）was pretty much everywhere in music with a group under him including Uchida, hitomi and TRF for instance.

But with her second album "MI-CHEMIN" which was released in September 1995, initially a lot of the tracks there had no connection with Komuro so that, according to J-Wiki, it probably prompted King Records to add on a couple of those hits by the guy in a bonus track sort of way at the end of the album, one being "BABY'S GROWING UP".

The one song that I was actually looking at for tonight is the track "Getsuyoubi no Asa" (Monday Morning), and yep, it definitely doesn't sound like Komuro. In fact, I'd say that there was some Shibuya-kei (by way of perhaps Bacharach and maybe Swingout Sister) infused into its melody and arrangement by Hideo Saito（斉藤英夫）. Manaho Mori（森真帆）was responsible for the lyrics which tell the tale of life after the end of a romantic relationship as a woman begins her life anew by taking a ride on her bike against the pedestrian flow heading into work. It does sound like the plot for a J-Drama featuring Uchida. As for "MI-CHEMIN", it peaked at No. 3 on Oricon.

Yuki Uchida/Kohmi Hirose -- Shiawase ni Naritai（幸せになりたい）

Nice to hear a mellow J-Pop song from the 1990s. And this one is one that I haven't heard in a very long time so it's nice making a re-acquaintance with "Shiawase ni Naritai" (I Want to Be Happy) by singer/actress Yuki Uchida（内田有紀）. Released in January 1996, this was written and composed by Kohmi Hirose（広瀬香美）who knows something about creating some energizing high-tempo tunes and cuddly mid-tempo ballads like this one.

Although I know that Uchida appeared in the later movies of the "Odoru Dai Sosasen"（踊る大捜査線）franchise, I still see her more as the 1990s It Girl with the tomboyish streak. Her singing career was arguably less known than her time as an actress, but whenever I do think of it, it's usually either "Shiawase ni Naritai" or "See The Sky" that comes to mind.

"Shiawase ni Naritai" was Uchida's most successful single (her 5th) as it broke into the Top 10 at No. 6 and later becoming the 59th-ranked single for 1996. The song was also included in her 4th album "nakitakunalu" which was released in October that year. It peaked at No. 18. The song was also the theme for the TBS drama "Campus Note"（キャンパスノート）which starred Uchida herself.

https://itunes.apple.com/jp/album/%E5%BA%83%E7%80%AC%E9%A6%99%E7%BE%8E-the-best-love-winters/202325943

It's a pity that I couldn't find a whole version of Hirose's cover of "Shiawase ni Naritai" but I could find an excerpt at iTunes. That was a track on her BEST album "Love Winters" from November 1998. For some added Hirose goodness, there is another song of happiness in her song list.

TRF -- See the Sky~1999...Tsuki ga Chikyuu ni KISS wo suru （月が地球にKISSをする）

Wow! I look at the above video and I feel the aging process. It was the best of times and the Komuro of times...as in the Komuro Boom of the mid-1990s when the unassuming Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）and his singers managed to steamroller a lot of J-Pop into submission, if only for a few years.

Again, TRF was one of those Komuro units that got my attention early in my time in Ichikawa. A few of their songs had already got me hooked on them and then I ended up getting a couple of their albums, "Billionaire" and "dAnce to positive". With that latter album, the first full track was "See the Sky ~ 1999...Tsuki ga Chikyuu ni KISS wo suru" (The Moon Kisses the Earth...and I hope that was meant in the purely poetic sense; I would like us to be around a bit longer), an explosive start to the album.

It looks like TRF and Komuro wanted to hit the ground running with "See the Sky" with all guns a-blazing. In the footage above, which I remember seeing live on TV, everyone was just partying away like it was 1999 (all due respect to the late Prince) so I kinda wonder if this had been shown during the Holidays. For some reason, it just had that year-end decadence feeling. And when I was listening to the song on the CD, I just thought that this could have been an opening theme song for a particularly action-packed cop show. The way that the song rolls out could have been well-matched with a opening credits montage sequence just like in the old "Mission: Impossible" series. And those English lyrics by Komuro seem as if he played the word association game a bit better than most lyricists at the time.

I don't remember much of Yuki Uchida's（内田有紀）singing career although I was aware that she was a member of the Komuro gang. However, thanks to the footage, I will always remember her as being a part of the performance for "See the Sky" even though it remains solidly in the TRF discography. I had been wondering what she was doing lately but then she did pop up in the last couple of "Odoru Dai Sosasen"（踊る大捜査線）movies as one of the later regular members.

There were a couple of other tracks on "dAnce to positive" that I have already written about: "Masquerade" and "Crazy Gonna Crazy".

Yuki Uchida -- BABY'S GROWING UP

Another piece of Komuro’s (小室 哲哉) dance/pop hit factory, Yuki Uchida (内田有紀) was a notable aidoru from the mid-90s. With TK she had two big hits, “Only You” and “BABY’S GROWING UP”. Although “Only You” was bigger than “BABY’S GROWING UP”, I like the second one better.

With a typical TK combination of pop hooks and 90s house beats, “BABY’S GROWING UP” is an interesting song in Yuki’s discography. As the title already reveals, this song had a more mature sound than the aidoru ones she released before, especially at a time when dance beats were synonymous of “mature stuff” for pop singers, thanks to TK and 90s J-Pop queen Namie Amuro (安室奈美恵). And although the old cute aidoru style never died, it left the mainstream for a while. Even well established acts like the duo Wink suffered from this loss of popularity that haunted the aidoru category during the mid-90s. Yuki Uchida, on the other hand, succeeded in the market with a playful aidoru image that is best remembered by her short and tomboyish haircut at the time. But her songs quickly became edgier when Komuro took the producer seat. “BABY’S GROWING UP”, released in August 1995, was the final product of this short but successful partnership between TK and Yuki Uchida.

Talking a little bit more about the song, I really love TK’s synth work in “BABY’S GROWING UP”, especially the minimalistic synth notes that keep playing in various parts of the song. Yuki’s vocals are very nice too. We can tell that she was young, even though her voice was not overly cute. And the way she pronounces the title is very catchy.

Yuki stopped singing in 1999, when she decided to be a full time actress. But we can always remember her as a successful aidoru story from a time when female aidoru singers were having the hardest time in a marked dominated by female pop stars that were “shifting focus from the playground to the disco”, as the journalist David Tracey pointed out in his – very pejorative, if you ask me – 1996 article about Namie Amuro and the evolution of the aidoru genre (the article is here). In the end, J-Pop observers of the mid-90s could never guess that 15 years ahead Japan’s pop culture would be inside an even bigger “playground” centered on aidoru groups like AKB48 and Momoiro Clover Z (ももいろクローバーZ).

“BABY’S GROWING UP” reached #5 on the Oricon chart. It sold around 252,000 copies (source: generasia). The song was written, composed and arranged by Tetsuya Komuro.