This YouTube video is of an Japanese woman named Keiko who has a voice so similar to Karen Carpenter's that it's barely hard to distinguish the two. I was blown away by this performance. I love this song so much. She sings at various talk shows and entertainment shows across Japan and the people love her. She doesn't know English at all, so pulling off this song and the other Carpenter songs she sings is amazing.
In this video, she meets Richard Carpenter for the first time and as you can see at the end of the video, she is overwhelmed by his comments and his presence on the show. It's definitely a tear-jerker!
I love Karen Carpenter's voice. It's so clear, full, and her tone is just perfect. Keiko's is too. Is this Karen reincarnated? :)
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3 comments:
well, I think the difference is the difference between an original artist and a very good imitator. In a way they sound a lot alike, but in another way, they couldn't be more dissimilar.
What strikes me is less Keiko's performance than her emotion; she seems to be coming from a very sincere place.
I am a huge Carpenters fan. I grew up listening to their songs and I was very saddened when I heard of Karen's untimely death. Coincidentally, I am of Japanese heritage, though born as an American citizen, and so it was an exciting discovery for me to come across Keiko, via YouTube, and hear her wonderful voice. From the videos that I've seen of her and interviews, it is not her goal, nor desire, to be a 'Karen Carpenter' imitator. She genuinely loves Karen and Richard's music and the love they've shown the Japanese people on their concert tours. Keiko has been blessed with a beatiful voice and it's all the more wonderful since it also reminds us of Karen's. There can and will only be ONE Karen Carpenter, but I'm now a big fan of Keiko's, too, because of the honor and tribute she pays to wonderful woman that Karen was to all of her fans.
Keiko is a very good singer. You can, of course, tell the difference between her singing and Karen Carpenter's, but it is a reasonably close copy, especially since Keiko must work to overcome her Japanese accent.
A persistent feature of the Japanese accent is a heavier emphasis and partial aspiration of the sound of the letter "m" in words, as well as a different tonal color for vowels that follow letters "m". Japanese singers who want to imitate western ones more perfectly should be careful about it.
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