The surreal day Jennifer Connelly topped the Japanese music charts: “I had no aspirations to be a singer”
The Japanese entertainment industry has long been huge, with the country harnessing a pretty dedicated culture of fandom, which is why you often see ‘Japanese exclusive’ editions of albums by big American or British artists.
It’s often the case that English-speaking stars will find an unexpectedly large audience in Japan, and that explains why so many end up in Japanese commercials. I mean, just look at Bill Murray’s character in Lost in Translation, a washed-up American star who finds himself appearing in a series of advertisements being filmed in Japan, specifically for the Japanese market.
But many actors, singers, and filmmakers – washed-up or otherwise – have taken advantage of lucrative deals over in Japan, with everyone from Brad Pitt to David Lynch doing commercials that were only broadcast abroad.
In fact, Lynch only agreed to make a coffee commercial because it was for Japan, stating, “I’m really against it in principle, but they were so much fun to do, and they were only running in Japan, and so it just felt OK.”
In the 1980s, Jennifer Connelly was another celebrity who ended up in a Japanese advertisement, something that came shortly after her success in movies like Dario Argento’s horror film Phenomena and, of course, Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, which saw her star opposite David Bowie.
It seemed unusual to have the American teenager fly out to record some songs in Japanese, which she had to do phonetically, no less, but this was quite the norm in Hollywood at the time. It seemed like the consensus was this, why not go and profit from the international market?
So, Connelly recorded two songs, despite the fact that she didn’t even want to be a musician at all. “I’m not a singer, I had no aspirations to be a singer. Everyone in my family is musical except for me,” she revealed on The Graham Norton Show… Yet, somehow, she found herself singing a jingle for a Panasonic advert, which showcased a hi-fi system that could also take calls.
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You wouldn’t expect a Japanese Panasonic jingle sung phonetically by an American teenager to top the charts, would you… But that’s exactly what happened, with Connelly reaching number one on the Japanese charts. The song, known as ‘Monologue of Love’ or ‘Ai no Monologue’, could’ve been the start of a promising musical career for the young Connelly, but of course, she decided against it, instead continuing her acting career over the coming years in movies like Some Girls, Career Opportunities, and The Rocketeer.
More success would come in the 2000s, like when she appeared in the harrowing drug thriller Requiem for a Dream and earned an Oscar for her role in A Beautiful Mind. Long gone are the days of Connelly doing advertisements in Japan, though – she also partnered with Shiseido in Japan around the same time as her hit single – but the fact that she received such success from singing in a foreign language shouldn’t be something that, for some reason, she seems really embarrassed about.
