Tomodachino uta" (a song of friends)
in this album is a song she wrote for the first time when she was fifteen. In 2006, Hiromi Iwasaki
(About her: See Oct. 26, 2006)
, one of the national female singers, covered this song in her album " Natural
" -this shows Nakamura's talent as a songwriter. Iwasaki described Nakamura's songs as analects by someone who has kept on struggling
. As "Sayonara juudai
(good-bye my teenage days)
shows, she expressed complications and despair -and hope in teenage days. She took interested in music as a child. But in adolescence and the period of voice breaking, she disliked her voice -and she began to write songs to put her inexpressible emotion into words. She says that she wished to become a songwriter back then. And even after she made her debut as a singer with a single "Yogoreta shitagi" (dirty underwear)
, she kept on straggling between eagerness to sing and rejection to sing. Since she come out publicly about gender identity disorder, this fact drew attention. However, the essential appeal of her songs is personal magnetism regardless of gender -this album shows.
Her third album inFeb. 2010"Ashitawa haremasu youni
(I hope it will be sunny tomorrow)
is said to be different from two other albums. Mainly she used to express pain and bitter emotion, but the main theme of this album is departure.
The title "Tenmade todoke" (penetrate heaven, my desire)
is a phrase used in "Kakeashino ikizama
(life in the fast lane)
. As I realized it, I thought of Shawn Colvin
's " A Few Small Repairs
" -the title is taken from a phrase of " Sunny Came Home
". Actually, Shawn Colvin is not known very well in Japan although she won Grammy's Award several times. So I don't remember how I knew about her -but somehow I felt that she paralleled me in some way.