A Tribute to Japanese Idol Singer Miyuki Watanabe of the Pop Music Girl Group Nmb48

This article is going to take a look at a Japanese idol singer that has made a very profound impact on the Japanese entertainment industry. That person is Miyuki Watanabe. At first, the objective was to provide a comparison between Miyuki Watanabe and Sakura Miyawaki and to try and discuss which of these Japanese idol singers prettier overall was. But since Watanabe having been such a high profile name in the history of NMB48 deserves a proper tribute. In addition to this tribute we will also attempt to analyze and review her solo album called 17%.

Miyuki Watanabe who graduated from idol group NMB48 in August 2016 was at the center of a scandal that could have easily destroyed her career. But nowadays, Miyuki is busy working on a solo career. It has been reported that Watanabe has released the jacket covers for her first solo album called “17%” which is set to come out on April 3, 2019. The photo shoot for the jacket covers features photos that were taken in a luxury hotel in Macau! The solo album will come in the Limited Edition, Regular Edition and the Fan Club Edition. All three versions of the album will have 10 songs on them. The Fan Club Edition of the album 17% will have a Blu-ray disk that has LIVE concert footage and there will be commentary by Watanabe herself. Watanabe has also released a video for her new solo song called “Yuugure Sentimental.” The video was directed and composed by TSUNKU and the song is sad to be about someone that is troubled by love. The video has Watanabe walking around in her hotel room, then leaving the room and walking in the hotel’s classy styled hallways before walking in the city dressed in a beautiful fur coat!

Watanabe will also be in charge of producing a girl group as auditions for spots have begun via the app called mysta. Winners will be chosen based on how many users points that they get and then these winners will become part of this new unit that Watanabe will be a part of for some time. Watanabe gave us her perspective on the group saying that she aims to create a pop group that has very high energy. She also said that it would make her happy if different kinds of people came and tried out for the group.

Note: since the solo album 17% has now been released, it is necessary to provide at least some kind of analysis of the album, especially since this is Miyuki’s first major musical work outside of NMB48. With that stated, here is the track listing for the album 17%:

Yugure Sentimental

Ringo Uruwashi Minori no Kisetsu

Milky Land

Myself

Sukidashi

Fly With Your Dream

Milkyway

Perfect Girl

Love Story

Ano Hi No Sora to Watakushi no Mirai

Stylistically the album resembles that of AKB48 with a few very long song titles so it won’t be worth it to list the titles here again. In what may be a sort of interesting move or just pure coincidence, many of the song titles are in English. Remarkably, there is a lyrical part that speaks of going to the milky way with your lover. Milky Land begins with a piano part before it speeds up and becomes quite a decent high-energy kind of song. There is no silly song structure and this album isn’t as soft like the Country Musume stuff. 17% is an album that sees Miyuki finally being able to express herself outside of the structure of a big group of girls and while 17% isn’t a perfect album, for fans of J POP it is a welcome treat especially now that many of us are still supposed to stay at home and be under quarantine. Fly With Your Dream lyrically tries to bring across the message that we should dream big and set big goals and that everything will be fine in the end. Some of us may think that this is overly optimistic but the Universe always has our best interest in mind even if it may not seem that way. Perfect Girl with its upbeat nature and beats may just be the best song in this album. It sounds sort of like Hyori Lee’s Bad Girls but this song is more upbeat as Miyuki calls herself the perfect girl in this song.

Congratulations to Miyuki Watanabe for producing a girl group and coming out with a solo album in spite of going through a scandal that could have destroyed her career. She is only 26 and she has many more decades left as a performing artist if she doesn’t retire from the entertainment industry.