Playback: Mirei Toyama - Hysteric girl

Mirei Toyama is only 15 years old, but we know well enough by now that age ain't a young age is nothing to immediately turn a nose up at when it comes to music. We have had enough young artists come up around this age with legitimate hits and classics to have a margin for acceptance. Aaliyah, Destiny's child and JoJo to name a few of the more credible artists who started snatching wigs at a young age.

Another name we can not leave out of this is or course Hikaru Utada, who didn't just snatch at the age of 15. She left an entire nation bald, broke and hungry, and dropped one of the best selling albums in Asian history as a result. 

Hikaru Utada is significant here. Not just because she is the absolute shit, but because her scent lingers all over Mirei Toyama's song "Hysteric girl" like she cocked her leg over it.

The first thing that struck me about "Hysteric girl" was how much it reminded me of Hikaru Utada in her First love phase. More specifically, "Automatic". The music, the way Mirei rides sections of the song; it's...AU-TO-MAAAAAATIC. As much as I love Hikaru Utada, Mirei's vocals are much stronger and stable here than Hikaru's were at the age of 15. (Let us not forget that horrid note at 4:39 when she tries to go in on a vocal ad-lib.

♪ Tell my wwhh-hyyy *voice crack. Note goes off key* Ooooooo-yeaaaaaaaa-eeee-yeah! ♪ 

Never forget.

Mirei Toyama has been drifting in limbo for a short while. She did a stint at some BET thing and released a new song and video to YouTube last month, but generally all has been pretty quiet,  with no sign of an album or EP in sight. She just...does stuff once in a blue moon. When you're 15, in Japan and want to break into the music, talent isn't what will get you national exposure and a record deal. at least not any more.  Signing your life away to a 10 year contract of never being able to date, wearing school girl uniforms, Lolita outfits and boots which lace way too far up a leg for a 15 year old is how you go about it in 2014.

Mirei doesn't have much of a presence in music yet, which is a shame because it's nice to have a young girl come into the J-music game at such a young age with such a good voice and a love for R&B. But she's riding solo in a lane that nobody is really paying a great deal of attention to. She's not tantalisingly cute enough, her socks aren't high enough and none of her songs sound like Eurobeat from 20 years ago which could be put into a DDR or Sega Saturn rhythm game. But I will be keeping a tab on her in the meantime before she fades completely into obscurity.