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80's J-Pop: Miki Matsubara

Album cover for Miki Matsubara's "Stay With Me".

Miki Matsubara, or Suzie Matsubara [as she also went by], was a composer, lyricist and singer from Japan. She was known for her 80's J-Pop love songs, but really became famous after her debut single, "Stay With Me", was released in November 1979. I'm sure many of you have heard this song, and I'm a fan of this talented woman myself, thus I decided to write about her.

Early Life

Miki Matsubara was born 28th of November 1959 in Osaka (Kishiwada), Japan. She grew up with a father, mother and younger sister in Hiraoka Town. Miki quickly became familiar with jazz music, as her mother was a jazz singer. She started playing piano at an outstandingly young age of 3 and simply embraced music in general, not only jazz but also rock. She went to ordinary schools her whole childhood and was praised as being a great and hardworking student who would enroll into university, but Miki had already dreams of becoming a singer, so she tried to pursue that dream by joining bands growing up. 

1977, at only 17 years old, Miki decided to quit high school and travel to Tokyo to debut as a singer. She eventually got recognized and that is what kicked of her career in music year 1979.

Career

Miki began her musical career 1979 with her debut single "Stay With Me", which became an immediate hit: The single sold over 400 000 examples. One after another, her singles and albums reached the charts quickly and earned her recognition just as fast. This huge fame made all sorts of people want her to sing at events, concerts and such. In the 90's, Miki started working especially on soundtracks for anime and music for commercials.

During her career, Matsubara released 8 singles and 12 albums. Some examples of her other popular songs are "Love for sale", "You've Got A Friend" and "THE WINNER".

Personal Life

Very little is known about Miki Matsubara's personal life, but what is known are things like her marriage with Masaki Honjo, who played the drums in her band. Honjo later became a dentist and died 2007, at 54 years old.

During Matsubara's life as a student, her eyesight started to worsen because of exhaustion from a part-time job, but this got fixed with surgery.

Death

At the end of year 2000, Miki Matsubara sent messages to her close and loved ones, including her label and company, where she wrote that she was going to discontinue with her music career and she could not be reached after the e-mails were sent out. She disappeared completely from the spotlight. It was revealed 2001 that Matsubara was suffering from cancer, and was at a late stage of it during the time of the diagnosis, so she fought during her last years to try to win over the disease.

After hearing from her doctor that she had only three months left to live, Miki Matsubara died due to complications with cancer 7th of October 2004, at 44 years old.

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