I’d gone to karaoke many, many times with friends and co-workers over the years, but it wasn’t until I got into j-pop in the mid-90’s that I sang it as intended, i.e.: singing Japanese Songs in Japanese!
In those early days, I had only a handful of songs I sang…(reasons to follow shortly) songs like “Time Machine” by Fumiya Fujii, “Kimi ga Itakara” by Field of View, “Yuzurenai Natsu” by Tube, and to round things off… Hmmm…. Something by Lindberg? Kome Kome Club? CoCo?
How about Shinohara Ryoko’s “Motto Motto”?
Eh?
Yeah, I know, thinking back on it NOW, it seems almost unfathomable that I would choose that overly dramatic Tetsuya Komuro song as one of my very first tunes, but at the time, it was just about my favorite song on the latest j-pop cassette mix I was listening to, and for SOME REASON, I really wanted to sing it- and, given the tasks I would have to take to sing it song at Karaoke, I’d BETTER like it!
You see, whatever song I chose, I’d have to romanize it myself beforehand because I couldn’t read kanji well and would’ve had a hell of a time trying to read off the screen as I sung! And since my kanji skills sucked, I couldn’t transcribe it off the CD lyrics, either! No, all the lyrics had to be romanized PHONETICALLY! And since this was back before the Internet, I had no help with those difficult-to-decipher words…I was completely on my own!
Well, to say I failed trying to sing Shinohara Ryoko would be an understatement, not only did I struggle with Ryoko’s low-to-high pitch singing style, but J-pop buyer Dave thought it was the funniest thing to see me trying to sing holding these crumpled pieces of paper in my hand, and would remind me about it forever after! AHAHAHA
To this day, I still have that piece of paper with that brutally transcribed Motto Motto lyrics that I took with me to karaoke, and my lack of Japanese words and phrasing makes this thing LAUGHABLE to look at now, but it’s kind of neat to think I loved this song that much back then!
So, here we are years and years later, and while watching Shinohara Ryoko in her latest drama (Ryoko’s become QUITE the successful little actress since then!) I was reminded of how much I loved her back in the day, and when I dug up this old Hey Hey Hey performance of Motto Motto to rip for this post, I have to say:
I was BLOWN AWAY by just how AWESOME this song is! Listening to it now, it all comes back to me: The wonderful structure of the song and the way the chorus would build up to the next line, and before I knew it, I found myself mouthing the words right along with her! And MAN! Is Ryoko FRICKIN’ GORGEOUS here!!!! No wonder was so smitten with her!!! Watching it now, I can finally see the magic of this tune that made me want to sing it- it’s THAT good!!!
