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.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Tomomi Kahala -- save your dream



Recently, I watched Tomomi Kahala’s (華原朋美) 2014 Tour and it reminded me how much I like the majority of her 90s Komuro-penned songs. For my surprise, the song she chose to open the concert was “save your dream”, a hit single released by her in October 1996 that she rarely sings nowadays.


I was not the biggest fan of “save your dream” in the past, but it surely grew on me. Unlike TK’s Techno songs, "save your dream" is more pop-oriented with lovely keyboards and guitars. As for Tomomi Kahala, she has always been a good singer, and “save your dream” showcases interesting notes she could reach at the time (she was good in the 90s, but nowadays she is great). One other thing is that you can hear Komuro doing his clumsy background vocals through the song, an unfortunate common practice he had back in his heydays.

Other than that, everytime I listen to this "save your dream" I think about a bright sunny day and remember all the great J-Pop songs from the mid-90s, a time when Komuro was the king and produced a bunch of different artists. It was not the greatest time for traditional aidoru singers, but Tomomi Kahala managed to make a name for her still using the old aidoru tag, which meant a more restrained image if compared to rival Namie Amuro (安室奈美恵), for example.

"save your dream" reached #1 on the Oricon charts, selling 808,570 copies. Lyrics, music and arrangement were all done by Tetsuya Komuro (小室哲哉).

Source: generasia.com

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