Melancholy is one word that comes to mind when listening to the music of singer/songwriter Miyuki Nakajima, whose forte is songs about the downside of love. While there's noting particularly remarkable about the pop/rock style of her music, Nakajima has a distinctive, powerful voice that recalls French chanson singers. Sometimes her vocal style is a bit overdone, but at least Nakajima knows how to emote. Typical of Nakajima's lyrics is this excerpt from her song "Sasayaku Ame (Whispering...

Melancholy is one word that comes to mind when listening to the music of singer/songwriter Miyuki Nakajima, whose forte is songs about the downside of love. While there's noting particularly remarkable about the pop/rock style of her music, Nakajima has a distinctive, powerful voice that recalls French chanson singers. Sometimes her vocal style is a bit overdone, but at least Nakajima knows how to emote. Typical of Nakajima's lyrics is this excerpt from her song "Sasayaku Ame (Whispering Rain)": "He just doesn't get it, Does he?/I have no maternal instinct/I'm not going to console him with a smile/This is no fairy tale with a happy ending." Nakajima, who was born in Sapporo in 1952, first came to prominence when she won the Grand Prix at the Yamaha World Popular Song Festival in 1975. She released her first album, Watashi no koe ga kikoemasuka (Can You Hear My Voice?), the following year. Nakajima is justly famous for her literate, sophisticated lyrics, and in recognition of that and her work as a poet and novelist, in 1999 she became the first pop musician appointed to an Education Ministry committee on Japanese-language education. Unusually for a J-pop artist, Nakajima almost never makes TV appearances, nor Does she go in for commercial endorsements. Just about the only ad campaign you'll see her in is one for the post office. Besides regular concerts, Nakajima stays in the public eye with her annual "Yakai" ("soiree") concerts, which combine music and spectacle in a series of thematically linked tableaux. Due to the limited size of the halls where Nakajima performs these shows, tickets for Yatai shows are very had to come by and "dafuya" scalpers do a booming trade in them.