Channel-Ai Community Blog - JPop reviews, articles

After Olivia Lufkin’s hiatus, many fans were eagerly awaiting a release which was credited to OLIVIA only. The NANA releases were satisfactory enough, but everyone knew that Olivia’s style moved towards a different and more unique direction. Also Olivia’s fans wanted music which reflected Olivia’s personality rather than Reira’s. In January 2007 Olivia finally released her highly anticipated 5th mini album titled “The Cloudy Dreamer“. However Olivia had another surprise up her sleeve, since “The Cloudy Dreamer” moved towards a different direction from her previous mini albums.

“Wish/Starless Night” is Olivia’s second and last NANA single. This single was announced in August, after it was decided that Olivia would sing both the opening and the ending theme songs for the second season of NANA. Thus avex announced the release of a double A-side single.

Indies princess, OLIVIA released her first single since her hiatus in 2004 titled ‘a little pain’. After such a long hiatus, Olivia Lufkin returned back with an excellent single and managed to gain the attention of Japan again.

Yuna Ito, a new artist in the Japanese entertainment scene, debuts with “ENDLESS STORY”, an excellent single full of emotions and hopes for the future for this upcoming artist.

Yazawa Ai’s masterpiece manga “NANA” has been gaining a lot of attention this year: first with its very own tribute album, a dedicated café, and now a movie starring Nakashima Mika herself as the rocker-chick Oosaki Nana. To play with the “realism” of the movie a single has been released entitled “GLAMOROUS SKY” under the psuedonym “NANA starring MIKA NAKASHIMA”. Staying true to the style of Yazawa’s character, the single contains four rock tracks, the title track being composed by the famous rocker HYDE himself…