Crystal Kay performing with others and carrying the whole performance

So. One thing about Crystal Kay is that she can sing. And she can sing live. In fact, she loves to sing live. She will relish any opportunity to sing live, which is what makes it tragic that she barely tours these days.

As I’d mentioned in another post, Crystal is known for collaborating pretty frequently, which also extends to performing with other acts pretty frequently. And more often than not, this can spell disaster for whomever she’s paired with, because they just aren’t able able to meet Crystal where she’s at. So here’s a few instances of times when Crystal had to be wheeled off the stage on a stretcher from the back pain she developed from having to carry whole performances by herself. Call her the J-pop mule.

2018

LDH were trying to show love to their acts. And that’s great. But they set Flower up by making them perform with Crystal Kay. They had those poor girls out there rangeless and toneless.

“Koi ni Ochitara” is a deceptive song. The cuteness and the brightness of it, along with it being a song where Crystal isn’t really doing much in the way of riffs, runs and R&B-isms, leads you to think that it’s an easy song to sing, and all you have to do is hit the notes. But this performance right here shows that Crystal is giving the song more than you realise. Compared to Crystal, the Flower girls sound flat and toneless. And this is precisely why Crystal had to be pushed off the stage in a wheelchair, due to the back pain she developed from carrying the whole performance.

Them Flower girls really allowed us to hear just how much Crystal adds to “Koi ni Ochitara” to lift it from being nondescript.

This was also just an awkward performance to watch, between the choreography of the dancers, and there being ZERO chemistry between Crystal and the Flower girls. Crystal was treating them like her backup singers, which she was right but wrong to do.

2007

KAT-TUN only had one member who had a decent voice, so this was always going to be a mess when anybody other than Jin Akanishi attempted to sing. But everything about this performance was a complete and utter mess from start to finish.

Watching this clip is like watching something from an alternate universe. Because it really is crazy to think that Crystal Kay was actually on national television at one point, with whole promo campaigns for her releases, which in this case was Shining. Nowadays, Crystal will be lucky enough if she can get a strong enough Wi-Fi signal at home to sing a lil’ Instagram live and sing something.

It’s a damn shame that we didn’t get a full performance of “Signal” where Crystal got to sing a verse, because “Signal” is the only KAT-TUN song I like, and the J-R&B vibe of it is right up Crystal’s alley. But instead she had to struggle in back with her ad-libs whilst the rest of the group were singing the chorus with zero blend and more keys than that little man with the apron in The Matrix Reloaded.

Each member honestly gave up even trying to sing when they had to sing a verse with Crystal. And I respect the awareness of their limitations and how crusty they were sounding compared to Crystal. But the show must go on y’all. At least TRY. Damn. But because nobody did, Crystal had to be wheeled off on a mobility scooter, due to the back pain she developed from carrying the whole performance.

Johnny & Associates (I shivered just typing that) seemed to be very particular about which non Johnny & Associates acts their groups would perform and record with. But Crystal seemed to have a golden pass, because in addition to appearing several times on the variety shows of Johnny & Associates acts, she had also performed with KAT-TUN a couple of times, performed with Jin Akanishi a couple of times, and also recorded two songs with him: “Wonder” and “Helpless Night”.

“Wonder” is like the J-pop equivalent of “Put It in a Love Song”. In fact, not even. Because we least we got the song for that. In the case of “Wonder”, all we had was audio from live performances and flip phone footage of the video which was shown on one of KAT-TUN’s tours. Only in 2020 did “Wonder” get an official release on Jin’s Best album, but Crystal wasn’t on it, so nobody cared. And the full music video is still unreleased.

2004

I knew this was going to be a problem as soon as I saw the song title. Because attempting to cover any Whitney Houston song from the early 90s is self sabotage, even for skilled singers. And this isn’t to say that Ayaka Hirahara is not a skilled singer, because she is. But I gazed into the future, and I saw struggle for her. And that’s what we got.

This was a set up.

They really shoulda flipped “Saving All My Love for You” into Japanese for Ayaka. Because singing a song in a language you are not fluent in completely changes the way in which you sing. To have Ayaka cover a song, a Whitney Houston song at that, in a language she is not fluent in, alongside Crystal Kay, a singer who is not only fluent in English, but has a singing style better suited to this specific song!? Somebody had it out for Ayaka. And because of this, Crystal had to be carried off the stage on a chaise longue, due to the back pain she developed from carrying the whole performance.

2017

Sometimes Crystal is able to perform on stage with somebody else and not have to endure back strain. And her performance of “Without You” with label mate Jay’ed was one of those instances.

Jay’ed and Crystal both sounded good. Things started off shaky for Crystal, and I thought this may be an instance of her being carried. But she fixed up her shit and got them notes in place REAL quick. Jay’ed actually sounds better here than he does on the studio recording.

It’s real sad that there was zero chemistry in this performance though. Jay’ed and Crystal may as well have not been on the stage together. “Without You” would have made for a really nice promotional single. The music video woulda had to have been some separately shot shit which looks really nice though, because Jay’ed and Crystal would have given us nothing in scenes together if this live performance is anything to go on.

2012

One of the coolest performances Crystal Kay has done with another person is probably the performance she did with Aki Yashiro, because it was so different for her. And the artist she sang alongside was from a WHOLE other generation to her.

One of the beautiful things about this performance is you could not only see the admiration Crystal had for Aki, but how Aki reciprocated this; knowing that Crystal is the real deal when it comes to singing. I can imagine Aki rolling her eyes when she heard she was performing with some young J-pop girl, only to be gagged in the soundcheck when she actually heard Crystal sing.

Hearing Crystal sing Enka sure is something. And it really highlights something that I don’t think Crystal is given enough credit for as a singer, and it’s her ear and musicality. Crystal doesn’t just mimic how Aki or an Enka singer would sing. She interprets the song in a way which works for her, whilst still honouring the characteristics of Enka, and she sounded great. Crystal knows she doesn’t have the tone or the voice to match Aki, so she doesn’t bother trying – which would have been the mistake that other less skilled singers would have made. One of the few J-pop singers in the game right now who could pin Enka and match an old school bitch like Aki Yashiro tone for tone is Kumi Koda, and it’s something I wish she’d tap into more, but that’s a whole other post.

Hearing Crystal take on this song so well further makes me question why on Earth we got such safe and boring cover choices on I Sing, when we could had something like Aki Yashiro’s “Funa Uta”. Not only would this have resonated with older music listeners (an audience which is grossly overlooked in music across the board), but it could have put a younger audience onto Enka; a style of music which is also grossly overlooked these days, despite traits and aesthetics of it still being used today.

There are a bunch of other performances that Crystal Kay has done with other acts over the years. But between Japan hating everything online and copyright striking left and right, and Crystal Kay performances being so scarce online as it is – we barely have anything to fawn over. And because Crystal Kay’s team don’t be doing shit, I know they haven’t once reached out to the likes of NTV, Fuji TV, NHK or WOWOW for them tapes to build out any type of archive of her performances so that they could perhaps one day share them via YouTube, even if it’s just short versions of them. And they sure as hell ain’t reaching out to Sony, who probably have a lot of that shit sat in the corner of the disabled toilet, which is in the basement of their HQ offices, and can only be reached by going down six flights of stairs and crawling through a ventilation shaft, because Japan also don’t care about disabled access.

Gurl, fire the whole management and marketing team.