Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Shoko Aida -- Jóia


In my first entry for Kayo Kyoku Plus, I decided to talk about Jóia, the second single from Shoko Aida’s (相田翔) post-Wink career, released in April 1996. “Jóia” is a typical bossa nova styled song, and although I’m Brazilian, I don’t quite listen to “bossa nova” or “samba”. “Jóia”, in the other hand, is a song that I enjoy a lot, so let’s check out the reasons.


First of all, some translation notes. If the reader is curious, “Jóia”, in Portuguese, means jewel. And the phrase “de noite eu espero por você”, repeated by the backing vocalists in the last minute of the song, means “I wait for you at night”.

So, talking about the song itself, I can tell that Shoko’s vocals were very beautiful, and if the reader is a Wink fan, you can agree with me how much her voice had matured if compared with Wink’s first smash hit, Ai ga Tomaranai ~Turn It Into Love~” (愛が止まらな), released in 1988. It’s important to notice, of course, that in “Ai ga Tomaranai ~Turn It Into Love~”, Shoko’s vocals were young and innocent, something very welcomed and necessary in aidoru singers.

Even though Shoko’s vocals are, for sure, one of the charming points of “Jóia”, the soft melody contributes a lot to the whole atmosphere.

I firstly came across this song when I discovered Wink some two years ago (not a long time). After becoming a big fan of the duo, I started checking both girls solo efforts. I remember listening to this song a lot while traveling. Don’t know why, but it’s a good travel song. Maybe the beautiful melody combined with Shoko’s voice was something pleasant to hear while relaxing in a traveling bus.

The PV is simple, but the song doesn’t ask for anything really elaborated. Shoko’s beauty is enough for me in the video.

The single failed to chart on the Oricon (source: generasia) and we can surely understand why. Besides being a beautiful “bossa nova” styled song, Jóia” doesn’t quite match the requisites of a J-pop hit song of the year 1996. We can’t tell, but Shoko was probably aware that it was not going to climb high on the charts. But she surely wanted to try out this type of sound, as an entire “bossa nova” album, called “Jóia” (same name of the track, I know), was released one month after the single. And maybe I’m more worried about the Oricon charts than Shoko herself was at the time. Who knows? Even Wink’s last singles were poorly received on the Oricon charts, but that’s something we can discuss better in other article.


Jóia” was written by Shoko Aida and Rui Serizawa (芹沢類). The music was composed by Shoko herself and the arrangement was put together by Robbie Buchanan (source: generasia).


To end this post, I decided to share one of my favorites renditions of "Ai ga Tomaranai ~Turn It Into Love~" in which Shoko Aida sings it live without her Wink partner, Sachiko Suzuki. This footage is from 1997, one year after Wink's official disbandment.


6 comments:

  1. Hi, Marcos V.

    Thanks very much for your first posting on the blog. I actually have one of Shoko Aida's post-Wink albums, titled "Luz" and taped a couple of the tracks onto a mix cassette tape. Among a number of singers over the decades, there's been a love for bossa nova.

    I'm not exactly sure but I think Shoko, in the lower video, was performing on the wooden deck outside a large shopping mall called "Decks" in the trendy bayside Odaiba district. I used to go there a fair amount, and one time, I actually did see Okinawan blues group, BEGIN, do a gig there.

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    1. I’m aware of this Love for “bossa nova” among Japanese artists. Chisato Moritaka, for example, recorded a good amount of songs in this genre, including an entire mini-album back in 1988, called “Romantic”. I was not very fond of her voice at the time, so that’s probably one of the reasons why I don’t care so much for those tracks. She also played piano solos in some of those tracks.

      About the “Ai ga Tomaranai” video, I really don’t know more informations. Based on your knowledge, you are probably right. One thing that I always imagine is that, based on the year of the performance (1997), she must have sung some of her “bossa nova” songs at this concert.

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  2. Hi Marcos V,
    Welcome to the KKP team and thanks for this great post on 相田翔子. Being a big WINK fan as well I really appreciated this post as well as the video of Shoko's solo rendition of 「愛が止まらない」 which was pretty interesting.

    "Luz" is a pretty good album which has some nice Latin inspired songs like 「愛された薔薇」.

    She continued her World Music theme going with a European/French motif for her next couple of albums and with singles like 「クレタの白い砂」 and
    「夜明けの雨はピアニッシモ」.

    It's actually a funny coincidence that J-Canuck mentioned BEGIN as there is a video of BEGIN singing a duet with Shoko of their song 「笑顔のまんま」 on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia64WSzPv1s

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    1. Thanks a lot for the reception, JTM. I’ll be great to work with you guys.
      I’m glad you’re a Wink fan. That makes me really happy. I’m going to talk about some of Wink’s songs in a near future.

      About “Luz”, I never heard the album as I couldn’t find it yet. It’s a pity, because everybody seems to like it. I know that in “Jóia” (the album) she worked with “bossa nova” living legend Sérgio Mendes in some tracks.

      As you talked about her European/French inspired albums, I remembered that I have a beautiful live performance of “Paris, je t'aime d'amour” at 2003’s GIRL POP FACTORY. Her voice is always very lovely, and she is a classy lady. I’ll try to upload this video when I write my next Wink article, which, as I said, will be up in a very near future.

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  3. Marcos V, welcome to KK Plus and thanks for this great post on Shoko Aida.

    I really like Wink, so I was naturally led to check out Shoko's solo effort as well. I agree, "Joia" is a soothing song to take on a ride. She certainly matured as an artist through the years, and I adore her French-style cover songs from the early 2000's that JTM mentioned.

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    1. Thanks for the kind reception, nikala. Let’s all unite our strengths and put some great Japanese songs in Kayo Kyoku Plus.
      Wink is a very charming act. I’m always very confused when I show them to some friends and family, here in Brazil, and they laugh at them saying that the girls are kind of strange.
      As you said, Shoko really matured. But I must confess that I enjoy Wink’s earlier synth-pop/disco songs a lot more than Shoko’s post-Wink work. Jóis, for example, is an album that I listen just in “some” occasions, and not at “any” occasion, like Wink’s earlier albums or compilations. Her voice, though, became astonishingly beautiful as time passed by.
      As I talked to J-Canuck earlier, I wish the duo could reunite and make a very nice national tour, and, lately, release in commercial video format. I bought the only live DVD released by them, and it misses a lot of classic songs, like “Kitto Atsui Kuchibiru ~Remain~”, “Sexy Music” and “Yoru ni Hagurete ~Where Were You last Night~”. Maybe someday my wish comes true, and they do like Pink Lady did in 2005, reunite to record a concert full of classics into DVD.

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