The song and style was completely R&B, with a bunch of disco guys dancing in it, and even the woman singing didn't look all that familiar to me...But listened to the song, I was blown away as the VOICE was UNMISTAKABLY Hikaru's!!!
I had to watch it over and over- only then did I realize the heavy glammed up chick was indeed Hikaru herself under all that mascara and makeup, and I HAD to find out MORE!
reading up online, I found out that in 1996, Hikaru did a project for label AVEX RECORDS re-imagining herself as R&B singer "Panache"...not sure if this was meant to be a one off side project or a rebranding of her career for the English market, but be that as it may, the stint produced two singles and one album of music! I needed to GET this!
I saw that there were a few sellers who had the CD up for grabs, sadly they were all in Japan! At the time I did not know that ways of such proxy dealers as Suruguya (whom I do fantastic business with!) but my friend Groink regularly did Japan purchases for his Bowling magazines, and agreed to add the order to his next batch of goodies! Took a few months for his cart to fill, but in time I was finally able to get my hands on Hikaru's PANACHE CD, entitled "You'll Never Know"!
The album was six tracks, including the two singles, so I didn't need to hunt those down:
1 You'll Never Know
2 Needing You
3 Lookin' For The Promise Land
4 Don't You Worry
5 Wild Temptation
6 Lookin' For The Promise Land (Club Mix)
I have to admit, it's a very different style of music for Hikaru and a big shift from her professionally crafted pop tunes on Pony Canyon, but it's refreshing to hear new music from her after all this time, and the two singles are bangers!
No comments:
Post a Comment