Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

Raid-kun of Raid My Minibar posed a rather interesting question on his blog recently: Who would you marry based on their voice?, and essential brother Ray Mescallado was the first to answer. So, what the hell… I love a good meme.

Most people will probably guess correctly who my number one is so I’ll start there rather than start from the bottom.

1. Reina Tanaka.

As longtime readers of this blog probably know, or at least figured out for themselves, I’ve never been completely able to pin down what it is that makes Reina Tanaka my favorite member of Morning Musume. One thing that’s made her that way, obviously, is her singing voice. Far from an attention (or any other kind of) whore, Reina possesses one of the best voices in the band, and the past couple of years of MoMusu releases have seen her coming out more and more; As a result, she is finding more room to shine as a singer. Thanks to the final version of their new single “Resonant Blue” leaking, I was able to grab the torrent as a tideover until my CD arrives later in the week, and for the record, the damn thing was the only song I played today on my iPod. Of course, the Wonkylicious One shines on that single. Long may she shine.

And now for the two choices of mine that may shock the shit out of most of you:

2. Queen Latifah

OK, now that most of you have picked your jaws up off of the floor, I should mention that I have been a fan of this woman for about 18 years now. Yes, she started out as a rap vocalist, and a damned good one (go search out her All Hail The Queen [Tommy Boy, 1990] and Black Reign [Motown, 1993] albums sometime), but from day one she was also singing in a traditional manner (on All Hail’s “Come Into My House” she not only mutli-tracked harmonies with herself on the choruses, she also composed and played the song’s distinctive keyboard bass line). From her second album Nature Of A Sista [Tommy Boy, 1991] onward, she began doing whole songs with singing instead of rapping, and her last two albums, The Dana Owens Album [A&M, 2004] and Travelin’ Light [Verve, 2007] see her doing pop and jazz standards. Need I also remind people of her performance in Chicago? (Yes, I actually bought that entire soundtrack just for her one song).

And finally, the third part of this lawful wedded vocalist troika:

3. Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins

I am a hardcore TLC fan. I love their music tremendously; all four of their studio albums are on my iPod and I would openly declare CrazySexyCool [LaFace/Arista, 1994] and Fan Mail [LaFace/Arista, 1999] to be amongst the greatest albums ever made. Sadly, only a few of their songs have been played on my iPod a couple of times, as going on six years afterward, I can only listen to a couple of songs of theirs before it starts to piss me off all over again that Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes is no longer with us. I am still kicking myself that I missed their only headlining show in Philadelphia (the 2000 Fan Mail tour) that was canceled because of a freak snowstorm. But I still love the sound of Tionne Watkins’ husky, sultry, sexy voice. Beyonce could take lessons from Tionne for 20 years and still not get it right (a lot of Destiny’s Child’s Survivor album was simply regurgitated imitations of what TLC had done on Fan Mail). Word has it that she’s doing a solo album. Hopefully her material will sound better than the leaked tracks I heard from her bandmate Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas’ still-in-progress effort.