Oh, Ayappe. Your smile can melt hearts.
Honestly, I have no idea how Ishiguro Aya ended up winning me over and becoming on-par with Goto freakin’ Maki in my idol singer ranking list. I downloaded “Morning Coffee” on a whim sometime in December 2007 (I think?), listened to it while checking out the color-coded lyrics at Project Hello since I knew absolutely nothing about this generation of Morning Musume at the time, and when I heard her first solo line in the song, kuchizuke mo dekinai hito, both my mind and the song came to a full stop. I wasn’t exactly expecting a girl with such a low register to appear out of nowhere and hit me in the face with her line (god, this makes it sound like I got mugged by Aya or something), as most of the girls in the song up to that point had been your usual feminine-sounding women. Admittedly, they could sing very well, but the way all of their voices were slightly similar just caused Aya’s vocals to stand out more to me. I think, up until hearing her, I had never really paid much attention to female singers with predominantly deep ranges.
So, in essence, it was the voice that sealed the deal regarding myself and Ayappe.
