This is a series of articles tracing hit songs from exactly 30 years ago. This time, we will look back at Arisa Mizuki&#8217;s &#8220;TOO SHY SHY BOY!&#8221; released in May 1992. It is one of Arisa Mizuki&#8217;s best-known songs. It sold 363,000 copies (Oricon).
<figure id="attachment_246593" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 1590px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-246593"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="794e8562"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/05/10000000000000084904_20220531112422096851_P120417164697.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-246593" class="wp-caption-text">Arisa Mizuki when she won the Best Geneist Award in 1993 (Sankei Visual).</figcaption></figure>
I remember that her debut song &#8220;Densetsu no Shojo&#8221; (lyrics and music by Ami Ozaki), released exactly one year earlier, in May 1991, was quite a hit. Arisa Mizuki, who is very likely to become a &#8220;legendary girl&#8221; in the future, sang the song with a more stable singing ability than expected, but it still sold 227,000 copies, so &#8220;TOO SHY SHY BOY!&#8221; has something extra to add.
<div data-friday-ad-slot="AD_inArticle"></div>
To add something about her singing ability, it seems that Arisa Mizuki at the time wanted to focus on her music activities, and in the December 1991 issue of &#8220;Meisei&#8221; (Shueisha), she said, &#8220;It&#8217;s okay, it&#8217;s okay. All I have is singing. Let&#8217;s walk down that road that seems to lead straight ahead! He stated, &#8220;I&#8217;ll just walk down that straight road.
What is the new thing you added to &#8220;TOO SHY SHY BOY! &#8211;Yes, it goes without saying. It is a new talent named Tetsuya Komuro.
Before &#8220;TK&#8221; (Tetsuya Komuro), let me talk about &#8220;M&#8221;. It&#8217;s a story that brings back memories, but back in the day, Arisa Mizuki, along with Rie Miyazawa and Riho Makise, were (half-way wildly) grouped together as the &#8220;3Ms,&#8221; the first letters of their last names.
Just before the so-called &#8220;Komuro-kei&#8221; became a topic of conversation, and well before &#8220;Kei Komuro&#8221; became a topic of conversation, Tetsuya Komuro provided songs to all of the &#8220;3Ms&#8221;. In particular, &#8220;Dream Rush&#8221; (September 1989), which he provided to Rie Miyazawa, sold 341,000 copies, about the same as &#8220;TOO SHY SHY BOY!
If you compare &#8220;Dream Rush&#8221; and &#8220;TOO SHY SHY BOY!&#8221; here, you will find that there is a considerable difference in impression. In a word, &#8220;TOO SHY SHY BOY!&#8221; is more suitable for the dance floor.
What?　What was the &#8220;dance floor&#8221; back then?　Needless to say, it was a karaoke box. Karaoke boxes, which were not in widespread use at the time of &#8220;Dream Rush,&#8221; were springing up like bamboo shoots after the rain. TOO SHY SHY BOY!&#8221; was a perfect fit for singing while dancing in the box.
The flow of the song becomes even clearer when another song is placed after &#8220;Dream Rush&#8221; and &#8220;TOO SHY SHY BOY! The following June 1993, trf&#8217;s &#8220;EZ DO DANCE&#8221; was released and became a big hit, selling 784,000 copies, more than double the sales of &#8220;TOO SHY SHY BOY!
Although &#8220;Komuro-kei&#8221; was often referred to in various ways at the time, when I listen to &#8220;EZ DO DANCE&#8221; again now, I am amazed at the degree of perfection. When I hear &#8220;TOO SHY SHY BOY!&#8221;, what comes to mind is the scene of girls dancing in a box at that time. With &#8220;EZ DO DANCE,&#8221; the scene becomes one of girls jumping around on the sofa in the box.
EZ DO DANCE&#8221; is about SHY girls in a karaoke box, working toward the dream of taking the music world by storm &#8211; just 30 years ago, when the path to Tetsuya Komuro&#8217;s great success was becoming clear.
<div data-friday-ad-slot="AD_inArticle"></div>
<h2>His own book &#8220;Sin and Music&#8221; shows the essence of Tetsuya Komuro as a musician.</h2>
I love reading &#8220;Sin to Ongaku&#8221; (Crime and Music) by Tetsuya Komuro, published in 2009 (Gentosha).
Why did the incident happen?　As the obi says, it is a documentary book about Tetsuya Komuro&#8217;s life up to his conviction for fraud in the same year.
The first thing that amazes me is his intelligence, or in other words, his calm situational awareness. His comments such as &#8220;I am partly responsible for the infantile nature of J-pop&#8221; and &#8220;However, when we become accustomed to a life where terrestrial digital broadcasting has become the norm and we can access the information we want with a single click, even 15 seconds will seem unbearably long. The sharpness of the comment, &#8220;I&#8217;m not sure how long it will take me to get to the information I want with one click.
What is even more surprising, however, is that he interprets everything musically. The obi says, &#8220;If you take music away from me, there is nothing left,&#8221; and we can see that there is no lie in that.
What surprised me the most was this comment&#8211; &#8220;For the production of &#8220;Chi&#8221; (note: a single released in 2006 by Hibiki Ohki Kodama), I was allowed to record a recording of a storytelling session. When I took that sound recording back to the studio and listened to it again, I found that he always kept BPM=78. That was the moment I was convinced that Kodama-san (the one who says &#8220;tch tch tch tch&#8221; in a rattled voice) was a perfect rapper.
He added, &#8220;Although not a singer, I saw Mr. Jiang Shonghong on a discussion program, and his voice also had a wonderful harmonic structure. Moreover, he always has a certain sense of pitch and speaks at a certain tempo, which is so comfortable that it puts me to sleep.
Tetsuya Komuro&#8217;s insane intellect has created a tumultuous situation. The moment when madness and intelligence had a synergistic effect, &#8220;Komuro-kei&#8221; became a big breakthrough, and the moment when intelligence exceeded madness, I think he began to head toward &#8220;straying and falling from the peak.
In contrast, Arisa Mizuki continued to star in a Guinness record number of serial dramas, and survived not as a singer but as an actress in a frighteningly stable manner.
The theme song for TV Asahi&#8217;s &#8220;Take Love, High School Teacher,&#8221; Arisa Mizuki&#8217;s &#8220;30th consecutive starring role in a drama series,&#8221; aired at the end of last year, was &#8220;TOO SHY SHY BOY! (TK SONG MAFIA MIX)&#8221; with a new arrangement by Tetsuya Komuro for the first time in 30 years.

 Music critic, born in Higashiosaka City, Osaka in 1966, currently appearing on bayfm's "9 no Oto Iki" Mondays. His books include "80's Ongaku Kaitai Shinsho" (80's Music Kaitai Shinsho) (Sairyusha), "Checkers' Music and Its Era" (Bookman-sha), "Intro's Law 80's" (Bungeishunju), "Southern All Stars 1978-1985" (Shincho Shinsho), and "Koisuru Radio" (Bookman-sha). His articles are serialized in Toyo Keizai Online, Tokyo Sports, Weekly Baseball, and other publications. His new book, "EPIC Sony and the Era" (Shueisha Shinsho) and "Keisuke Kuwata Theory" (Shincho Shinsho) will be released on June 17.

 Susie Suzuki

 Sankei Visual

 This is a series of articles tracing hit songs from exactly 30 years ago. This time, we will be looking at Arisa Mizuki's "TOO SHY SHY BOY!", released in May 1992. It is one of Arisa Mizuki's best-known songs. It sold 363,000 copies (Oricon). The

Tetsuya Komuro’s “Insane Intelligence” Hidden in Arisa Mizuki’s Famous Songs

Access Ranking