Nakamori Akina - Akina Nakamori - Fushigi [Japan CD] WPCL-11730 - Amazon.com Music. Nov 10, 2017 Akina Nakamori - Fushigi (Full Album) - Duration: 44:38. George King 50,943 views. Akina Nakamori.
Welcome to Part Two of my look at the enormous 28-Disc Set covering Akina Nakamori's singles during her years signed to Warner-Pioneer Music Group. In I covered 1982-1985, which conveniently took up exactly the first half of this set.
As we move into 1986, things began to change a little bit. Nakamori was definitely given more control over her music, though this was more apparent when it came to her albums. Between 1986 and 1987 she released a self-produced concept album featuring some tracks by EUROX (the fan-flippin-tastic Fushigi.which is going to be a future post), the all-female produced Crimson, and the New York City recorded and 100% English album Cross My Palm (GOD I want to write about this one.so much to say). Lounge Lizard Mac Cracks here. It's almost as if she was living two careers through her singles and her albums.
It's not like one was feeding the other one though.everything she was doing reached Number One. Trouble was on the horizon, however. You see, one of the things that kind of inspired me to go ahead and write this post was a certain Youtube channel. His former channel was called 'Fever Metal' and currently posts as ' hikali kagaya' [UPDATE: Banned] until the inevitable copyright shut down.
He has been posting archives of her seemingly endless television appearances (primarily from the defunct BEST TEN). It's staggering. She had to have been working nonstop since her debut. Nakamori also somehow managed to squeeze in a relationship with Masahiko Kondo, whom she met while filming her acting debut in the 1985 film Ai - Tabidachi. The cracks started to appear in 1987.
There is something just.off about Cross My Palm, the big single from the year was absolutely brutal, and her relationship seemed to be in a very bad place. All of this came to a head in 1989 with a suicide attempt and her subsequent retreat to Hawaii for a year. One of the defining artists of the 1980s Japan was completely absent by the end of the decade. With that said, the singles from the period are a trip. I didn't have a whole lot to say about Nakamori herself in the previous post, but you can tell that everything from 1986-1991 was just a little more personal than you would normally expect from the tightly controlled image of a JPOP superstar, especially one from this era. So how does the story of Warner-era Nakamori end? Let's find out.
Gypsy Queen c/w Saigo no Carmen WPCL.05. What Ports Do Torrent Programs Used To Make Logos there. 01 I kinda think this one is a little underrated. Gypsy Queen has the the misfortune of following an absolute smash, but is a gem in it's own right. It's a floaty song that kinda brings back the basics. The synths take a back seat to some skillful instrumentals. As usual, the vocal talent is on full display. Saigo no Carmen could probably only be the B-Side to Gypsy Queen. There is a theme to this single and these songs go together perfectly.
This one may be a little on the tacky side, but I like it a lot. Fin c/w Abunai MON AMOUR WPCL.09.25 This song is where Nakamori's sound begins to take a new direction. Considering this single came out hot on the heels of the awesome album Fushigi and before the slick Crimson, it all kinda makes sense. Fin has a bit of a floaty metro sound to it that seemed to stick around in a lot of her 1987 work. Abunai MON AMOUR is the B-Side.
I can't decide if this song is ripping off Stevie Wonder's Part-Time Lover or Jermaine Jackson's Dynamite (a song that she was apparently fond of as it was part of her set during the BITTER & SWEET performances). I'm kinda leaning on the former, but either way I love it.
It completes a low-key, but fantastic single. Both songs are equally as good and play off of each other nicely. Nonfiction Ecstasy WPCL.11.10 Heh. Alright, this one is a little weird. This single was released as a cassette-only.
The music to it is almost cartoonish, but the singing is as spot-on as you would imagine. If the music were done a little more seriously, I don't know if it would have been as memorable. Nonfiction Ecstasy is a little difficult to describe. Even the title is a bit weird.
Given the unusual nature of this single, there is only the vocal track and the Karaoke version. So yeah, there is no B-Side or Live Version. BLONDE c/w Seikyoto (Amish) WPCL.06.03 Alright, I love this single. BLONDE is a bit of a treat for me since I actually loooove her English album Cross My Palm. It might not be the same lyrically, but BLONDE is clearly a modified version of the composition of THE LOOK THAT KILLS from Cross My Palm.
It's a solid song that really takes advantage of what's already great composition by one Biddu. Yeah, Biddu is the same guy responsible for a lot of early disco and is responsible for Carl Douglas' Kung Fu Fighting. Love or hate the biggest hit on his resume, the man knows his way around a pop song. Seikyoto, or Amish as it's sung in the song, is the B-Side to BLONDE. This is one of the glitziest songs I can think of from Nakamori's catalog. While a lot of her work from the year seemed to focus on having more of a New York sound, this one feels more L.A.