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Miyuki Nakajima
Miyuki Nakajima (中島 みゆき ,Nakajima Miyuki?) (born February 23, 1952 ) is a Japanese vocalist, guitarist, lyricist, composer and radio personality. As a principal Japanese female veteran singer-songwriter who is often compared with Yumi Matsutoya, she has released 35 studio albums, 40 singles, 2 live albums and multiple compilations to date, and those sales have been estimated more than 21 million copies. [1]
In the mid 1970s, Nakajima signed to the Canyon Records and launched her recording career with debut single "Azami Jo no Lullaby". After rising to fame thanks to hit of "The Parting Song (Wakareuta)" released in 1977, she has enjoyed her successful career as a singer-songwriter, most strikingly in the early 1980s. She produced four singles that sold more than a million copies in the last two decades, including "Earthly Stars (Unsung Heroes)". She is also well-known for her experimental theatres called "Yakai" performed every year-end from 1989 through 1998. The idiosyncratic acts which featured scenarios and songs she wrote has been continued irregularly in recent years.
In addition to works as a solo artist, Nakajima wrote over 90 compositions for numerous singers, and made several chart-toppers.
In addition to works as a solo artist, Nakajima wrote over 90 compositions for numerous singers, and made several chart-toppers. She is also one of the Japanese songwriters who has the most cover versions which were performed by non-Japanese East Asian singers (especially in Taiwan and Hong Kong).
Nakajima is one of the literarily acclaimed Japanese songwriter of modern times, winning a couple of the country's Record Awards for her contributions as a lyricist. She is known as the sole musician whom was a participants of the National Language Council of Japan, took part in the late 1990s.[2
In February 1952, Miyuki Nakajima (中島 美雪 ,Nakajima Miyuki?) was born in Sapporo, the capital city of Hokkaido. Her grandfather Buichi was former politician of Hokkaido, and her father Shinichi ran a hospital of obstetrics and gynecology. When she was five years old, her family moved from Sapporo to Iwanai, where they had lived for six years. Nakajima had mainly lived in Obihiro City when she was a teenager. She is one of the most eminent graduates from Obihiro Hakuyou High School, along with a singer-songwriter Miwa Yoshida and a television announcer Shinichiro Azumi. She entered Fuji Women's University in Sapporo, and finished educational process in 1974.
When she was a third grade students of high school, she experienced live performance for the first time, playing self-penned song called "Tsugumi no Uta" at the stage of cultural festival. Since then, Nakajima launched participation to be a musician gradually.
In 1972, Nakajima participated in a folk contest held at the Hibiya Open-Air Concert Hall in Tokyo, and then she played a song called "Atashi Tokidoki Omouno". Her songwriting won the prize, and her performance was released as a part of an album which recorded the contest. This became her first recorded material.
After graduating the university, Nakajima continued striving to be a professional musician for nearly a year. Reportedly, she was already writing more than a hundred songs before she debuted.
[edit] Career as a recording artist
Early career (1975-1980)
On November 14, 1975, Nakajima performed "Jidai" at the 6th Yamaha World Popular Song Festival
In May 1975, her composition "Kizutsuita Tsubasa (Wings of Love -I Knew Nothing-)" won the prize on the 9th Popular Song Contest (also known by its abbreviation "Popcon"), organised by the Yamaha Music Foundation. After the contract with the Yamaha and Canyon Records, she debuted with a single "Azami Jo no Lullaby" that was released in September of the same year. In October, Nakajima entered the above mentioned contest with another her song "Jidai (Time Goes Around)", and gained the prize. It also won grand-prix of the 6th World Popular Song Festival, the other awards organised by Yamaha and held in December. [3]
In May 1976, she released the first studio album entitled Watashi no Koe ga Kikoemasuka. Since then, she has been worked as a prolific recording artist vigorously, producing one album a year. In the same year, Nakajima produced the number-one hit single as a composer for the first time, through "Abayo" which was recorded by Naoko Ken and sold over 700,000 copies. Throughout her over 30-year career, she has been contributing some 90 compositions as a songwriter for other artists, and making some of them huge hits such as "Shiawase Shibai"(recorded by Junko Sakurada), "Kamome wa Kamome"(a comeback single for Ken, released in 1978), and "If I Could Take to the Sky (Kono Sora wo Tobetara)" (performed by Tokiko Kato, released in 1978). Nakajima occasionally released retrospective albums which comprised songs written for other artists. The first one, Okaerinasai came out in 1979 has sold more than 500,000 units, and it became one of the best-selling albums for her.
Like the other than popular folk-rock singers in Japan such as Takuro Yoshida and Yosui Inoue, she has refused to appear on any kind of television program after she gained popularity, except handful of specials. Still Nakajima promoted her materials on TV in early career, particularly through the Cocky Pop which was sponsored by her management office Yamaha.
Miyuki Nakajima's fifth single "Wakareuta (The Parting Song)", released in 1977, became her commercial breakthrough song as a singer. The song reached number-one on the Oricon for only a week, kicking out "Nagisa no Sindbad" by the Pink Lady from the top of the hit parade. "The Parting Song" has finally sold more than 700,000 copies and became one of that year's biggest hits on the Japanese record chart.
Her 4th studio album entitled Aishiteiru to Ittekure built up her long-lasting popularity as a performer. The album that featured "The Parting Song" also includes the other highlight; a protest song entitled "Sejou (World's Context)", which became popular after used in the well-known TV drama Kimpachi Sensei in 1981.
In addition to the career as a recording artist, Nakajima has been known for the working as a personality of radio programs. Most eminent is All Night Nippon which has been one of the longest lasting programs aired by the Nippon Broadcasting System, which she participated as a host from April 1979 through March 1987. [4][5]Instead of TV appearances, she fostered her popularity through the witty and somewhat manic talking on the program.
Most of her compositions came out in the 1970s and 1980s are featuring lyrics which exposed grief or hatred explicitly. Sometimes such her works gained mixed reputations. Particularly, her 1980 album Ikiteitemo Iidesuka (it stands for "May I Live?" in Japanese), and its lead-off track "Urami Masu" (it features haunting lyric which means "I'll continue having a grudge against you 'til I die", and vocals like sobbing) brought about controversy because of their extreme titles.
[edit] 1980s; Commercial peak and decline
The first half of the 1980s was commercial heyday for a singer-songwriter Miyuki Nakajima. Seven her studio albums that were released at that era (from Ikiteitemo Iidesuka to miss M.) reached the number-one on the Oricon Charts successively. "Akujo", a more accessible tune than her previous materials, was released as a single in autumn 1981. The song became one of the biggest JP hits of the following year, providing her with first number-one spot on the Oricon singles chart since "The Parting Song" released in 1977. Kansuigyo, her eighth studio album that featured another interpretation of "Akujo" is most commercially successful long-playing stuff for her.[6] The album peaked at the number one spot on the Oricon for six weeks, and also reached the top of the Japanese year-end albums chart of 1982. [7] In the same year, she also produced a couple of top-3 charting singles; "Yuwaku" and "Unrequited Love".
As a composer and lyricist, Nakajima continued to write for other artists and gained success. "Suzume (Sparrow)", the first solo single for ex-Pink Lady Keiko Masuda whom was not successful at that time, led the performer to the top-10 spot again. In 1983, Nakajima won the 25th Japan Record Award for her songwriting on "Haru Nanoni", a song sung by then teenage pop icon Yoshie Kashiwabara. She continued career as a recording artist regularly during the mid 1980s, though subsequent releases were commercially less successful compared with previous materials. A string of her efforts that came out at that era has featured harder-edged sounds, because she came to introduce digital recording radically.
"Cold Farewell (Tsumetai Wakare)" released as a single in 1985 was the first song she produced in countries outside Japan. A top-ten charting song features lengthy harmonica solo performed by Stevie Wonder.[8] He also played the synthesizer on Nakajima's subsequent single "Atai no Natsuyasumi", released in the following year.[9]
In 1987, Nakajima contributed lyrics for the composition by Tsugutoshi Goto, a bassist and a record producer who had been one of long-term collaborators for her. The song entitled "Fu-Ji-Tsu" was released as a second single for a teen idol Shizuka Kudo who has also well-known as ex-member of Onyanko Club. During the late 1980s and the early 1990s, Nakajima and Goto wrote 17 songs for Kudo and some of them topped the chart, including "Dokoku (I Cried All Night)" released in 1993 and certified quadruple platinum by the RIAJ for shipments of in excess of a million copies.[10] Songwriting partnership with Goto was ended in 1993, but Nakajima has been continuing to write several songs for Kudo in later years. [11]
[edit] Project with Ichizo Seo and Yakai
Goodbye Girl released in 1988 was the album which she worked with a long-term co-record producer Ichizo Seo for the first time.Nakajima, who was highly satisfied with the recording of the album, considered Seo to the most appropriate musical partner for her. She has been working with him since the end of the 1980s.
Enlisting a new collaborator, Nakajima launched the experimental musical Yakai at the Bunkamura Theatre Cocoon, Shibuya, Tokyo. Yakai has composed of intricate story lines she newly wrote, and it was initially started as a sort of jukebox musical mainly comprising her songs that were previously issued. Her idiosyncratic efforts gradually became the famous stage performances which were held in every December for 10 years. Since the 7th act which was entitled 2/2 in 1995, Yakai came to be composed of new songs she specially composed. Most of those performances have been released on DVDs.
[edit] 1990s
Since the 1990s, Nakajima gradually came to appear several television programs and advertisements, though she continuingly rejected to turn up on the pop music television shows. In 1992, Nakajima appeared the television drama Shin'ai Naru Mono e (its title was named after her 1979 studio album), and played the acting as a doctor on the first and the last episode. [12] From 1993 through 2000, Nakajima also continuingly appeared TV advertisements of the Japan's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. Those commercials (most of them were featuring a new rendition of her early song "Time Goes Around" recorded in 1993) were aired during the Bon Festival and holiday seasons in Japan.
"Asai Nemuri (Shallow Sleep)", a theme song Nakajima wrote for the drama Shin'ai Naru Mono e was released as a single and gained massive success, selling more than a million copies and peaked at the number-two on the chart. It was included on her studio album East Asia released in October 1992. The album also features "Ito (Tapestry)", which is one of her songs that many artists covered, especially famous for the interpretation by Kazutoshi Sakurai and Takeshi Kobayashi's charity supergroup Bank Band.
In the middle of the decade, she wrote a couple of theme songs for Ienakiko, the TV drama series starring Yumi Adachi and which was aired on the NTV. The first one, a song entitled "Sora to Kimi no Aida ni (Between the Sky and You)" was released as a single in May 1994, and debuted at the number-one on the Japanese Singles Chart. The song became her most commercially successful record to date, selling in excess of 1.4 million copies. The other her composition "Wanderers Song" was featured on the sequel of the drama series aired in the following year, and it also gained similar success, reaching the number-one on the chart and selling over a million units.
Daiginjo, her compilation which was brought out in March 1996 provided her with last number-one spot on the albums chart, making her the oldest female artist who has produced number-one album on the Japanese music chart at that time (the record was overtaken by Yumi Matsutoya and Mariya Takeuchi in later years).
However, each of her studio albums released in the 1990s were commercially lackluster, and some of them failed to reach the top-10 on the chart. Tsuki; Wings and Hi; Wings released in 1999 are the worst selling albums for her, both of them has sold less than 50,000 copies.[6]
Lyrics written by Nakajima has been acclaimed literarily and educationally. She is known as the first and the sole musician whom was a participants of the National Language Council of Japan, took part in the late 1990s.[13]
[edit] 2000s
A quarter of a century later from her debut, Miyuki Nakajima left longtime Pony Canyon label and moved to newly founded Yamaha Music Communications. Then she released a double A-side single "Earthly Stars (Unsung Heroes)"/"Headlight Taillight", which later became her most well-known songs. She wrote them for the theme songs for Project X; Chousensha Tachi, the acclaimed television documentary program which was premiered on the NHK in March 2000. The single was debuted at the number 15 on the Oricon in July 2000, and it kept on charting for over 2 years. To express thanks for the unexpected commercial success of the theme songs of Project X, Nakajima decided to appear the 53rd annual music program Kōhaku Uta Gassen aired by the NHK on New Year's Eve of 2002. It gained public attention because it was her first live performance on TV since the late 1970s.
In 2006, Nakajima wrote the song called "Sorafune (Ship in the Air)" for the boy band Tokio. The song was used as the closing theme for My Boss, My Hero, the TV drama starring the group's frontman Tomoya Nagase. It became the second most commercially successful materials for them which followed their debut single, remaining on the Oricon chart for more than a year and selling approximately 480,000 copies. "Ship in the Air" was also the first chart-topper that Nakajima contributed both lyric and melody for other artist in 30 years, since "Abayo" recorded by Naoko Ken in 1976.[14] After a month from the release of her studio album Lullaby Singer that features her own interpretation of "Ship in the Air", her contribution for the Tokio won the "best lyrics" of the 48th Japan Record Award. [15]
Her latest studio album entitled I Love You, Do You Hear Me? was released on October 3, 2007. The album debuted at the number-four on the Oricon with in excess of 39,000 copies sold in its first week of release, and its provided Nakajima with the 34th top-ten hits on the Japanese albums charts.
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http://www.mininova.org/tor/1789472 , 13
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[1976] Watashi-no koe-ga kikoemasu ka 私の声が聞こえますか
[1976] Minna itte shimatta みんな去ってしまった
[1977] A-ri-ga-to-u あ・り・が・と・う
[1978] Aishiteiru-to ittekure 愛していると云ってくれ
[1979] Shinai naru mono e 親愛なる者へ
[1979] Okaerinasai おかえりなさい
[1980] Ikite itemo ii desu ka 生きていてもいいですか
[1981] Ringetsu 臨月
[1982] Kansuigyo 寒水魚
[1983] Yokan 予\u24863 感
[1984] Hajimemashite はじめまして
[1985] Go iro naoshi 御色なおし
[1985] miss M
[1986] 36.5C
[1987] Rareki (Utagoyomi) 歌暦
[1988] Miyuki Nakajima 中島みゆき
[1988] Goodbye Girl グッバイ ガール
[1989] Kaikinetsu 回帰熱
[1990] Yoru-o yuke 夜を往け
[1991] Uta de shika ienai 歌でしか言えない
[1992] East Asia
[1993] Jidai (Time goes around) 時代
[1993] Tankyou Seisen 單曲精選
[1994] Love or Nothing
[1995] 10 Wings
[1996] Paradise Cafe パラダイス・カフェ
[1998] Watashi-no kodomo-ni nari nasai わたしの子供になりなさい
[1999] Nichi wings 日-wings
[1999] Tsuki Wings 月-Wings
[2000] Tanpensyu 短篇集
[2001] Shinmoriuta 心守歌
[2002] Besuto Arubumo Ouginjou (Daiginjou) ベストへルバム大吟醸
[2002] Otogibanashi (Fairy Ring) おとぎばなし
[2003] Koibumi 恋文
[2004] Ima-no kimochi いまのきもち
[2005] Tensei 転生
[2006] Lullaby Singer ララバイSINGER
[2007] I Love You, kotaetekure I Love You, 答えてくれ
Nakajima Miyuki - Singles 2000, Singles Disc 1, 2 3
[2005] non-album versions ( )
Nakajima Miyuki Tribute - (2003-09-26) - YourselfMyself
Yakai ():
(Live) 中島みゆき - 夜会 Vol.02 「夜会1990」 [1990]
(Live) 中島みゆき - 夜会 Vol.03 - 「KAN・TAN (邯鄲)」 [1991]
(Live) 中島みゆき - 夜会 Vol.04 「金環蝕」 Part1 (1992)
(Live) 中島みゆき - 夜会 Vol.04 「金環蝕」 Part2 (1992)
(Live)中島みゆき - 夜会 Vol05 花の色はうつりにけりないたづらにわが身世にふるながめせし間に(1993)
(Live) 中島みゆき - 夜会 Vol.06 「シャングリラ」 (1994)
(Live) 中島みゆき - 夜会 Vol.08 「問う女」 (1996)
(Live) 中島みゆき - 夜会 Vol.10 - 海嘯 [1998]
(Live) 中島みゆき - 夜会 Vol.13 「24時着 0時発」 (2004)
中島みゆき - 夜会の軌跡(1989 - 2002) yakai-no kiseki ( yakai 2002 , . , )
( , ):
(TV) 中島みゆき - 夜会の冒険(NHK-BS) yakai-no bouken
(TV) 中島みゆき -夜会の十\u24180 年 yakai-no juunen
:
Nakajima Miyuki - Asai Nemuri
Nakajima Miyuki - Chijou-no Hoshi
Nakajima Miyuki - Gin-no ryu-no sei-ni notte
Nakajima Miyuki - Headlight Taillight
Nakajima Miyuki - Mikaeri Bijin
Nakajima Miyuki Rolling
Nakajima Miyuki - Sasayaku Ame
Nakajima Miyuki - Sora-to kimi-no aida-ni
Nakajima Miyuki - Tabibito-no Uta
Nakajima Miyuki - Tokyo Maigo
Nakajima Miyuki - Wakare uta
(PV)JAPAN [2002.11.13]
http://naivnaa-svoloch.livejournal.com/195496.html
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