Adult contemporary, where did it come from?

[koganbot]

Here's the theme-song to a Japanese videogame* that's sung in English by a Chinese woman (Faye Wong) who was born in Beijing but originally rose to fame singing in Cantonese rather than Mandarin. But the reason I post it (Faye Wong sings it well, but she's done more interesting stuff) is that when I heard it I thought to myself, "I bet she's covering a song by a country diva" thinking that this was the sort of song a country diva aiming to hit the adult contemporary market might have sung about thirty years ago. So my question would be, who else who isn't country would be likely to sing something like this? (One answer: Faye Wong, though I gather that this sort of thing was less and less a part of her repertoire as she went on. She's still a subject for further research, my having seen her name for the first time four days ago.)

"Final Fantasy VIII - Eyes On Me" (Watch on YouTube)

*Final Fantasy VIII, which I gather isn't just a game, but a whole franchise, a combination videogame and Taco Bell.

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

That was the context that "people who are fans of 'Eyes On Me'" would place it within. I was going to follow up by saying "but of course there's another context, which is that of yr avg late-90s orchestrated jpop ballad Uematsu was riffing off of"... only to find I can't come up with all that many examples! Lots of jpop ballads, that is, but they don't tend to be as lush, vocally or instrumentally.

Perhaps I'm just thinking of Onitsuka Chihiro (but then again, she debuted later):



According to Wikipedia this went to #11 Oricon (the album went #1) and sold 500,000 copies in 2000; "Eyes On Me" sold 400,000 copies in 1999.