Akina Nakamori - Enka 27 June 2007
Pop-singer Akina Nakamori has one of the largest discographies I’ve ever seen for a solo artist: twenty-four original studio albums and just over twice the number of singles. She is one of the few Japanese musicians to have a top-selling album in three different decades. But she was at the height of her popularity and success in the 1980’s. Nowadays we readily accept J-pop music with socially rebellious or sexually provocative undertones, but the 1980’s landscape was much more conservative. While she’s not the first contrarian Japanese pop musician, Akina Nakamori arguably did more than anyone to challenge the sweet and innocent J-pop image. Her refusal to settle into the industry mold is evident in her debut in 1982 and darkly punctuated by her suicide attempt in 1989, right after releasing the single Liar. Fortunately she failed at that, but it did irreparable damage to her career. It seems to be what most people remember about Akina Nakamori, that being an unsettling and tragic end to that era. But I think it’s important to emphasize what she accomplished in that time: from 1982 to 1989 Nakamori released fourteen original albums. Very few Japanese artists or bands release fourteen albums. But I don’t know if anyone else has ever done it only seven years, making Akina Nakamori one of the most impressively prolific Japanese musicians in history in my opinion.All of that said, I chose to upload Enka because it was a surprise hit and a change of form for Nakamori, someone already known by then for her experimentation with different genres. There are three versions of this album. Originally there was the thirteen-track ‘Type-A’ version and the fourteen-track, two-disc ‘Type-B’ version which I’ve uploaded; Type-B has one extra song, track six, while the second CD is an entirely instrumental version of the first. Two years later the ‘Type-A’ version was re-released as ‘Type-C’ with no changes that I know of besides the cover art—I guess because the original went out of print? I don’t know.Enka is a musical oddity in Nakamori’s discography and isn’t representative of the bulk of her music. But of course no single album can be a comprehensive introduction or summary of a musician with twenty-four studio albums to her name.As always, enjoy!