MR.VOCALIST X'MAS

Eric Martin sang English versions of songs by Japanese women artists on MR.VOCALIST in November 2008 and of songs by Western women artists on MR.VOCALIST 2 in March 2009. At the end of the year in which the reunited Mr. Big toured Japan, the series turned to Christmas. Sony Music Japan International released MR.VOCALIST X'MAS on 11 November 2009 as SICP-2422, priced at 2,730 yen including tax: twelve seasonal songs from Japan and abroad, all sung in English. It peaked at 26 on the Oricon weekly album chart and stayed on it for seven weeks. On the same day Sony issued MR.VOCALIST 1&2, a two-disc set of the first two volumes pressed only until the end of 2009. The first seven songs are Japanese. Tatsuro Yamashita's "Christmas Eve" opens the album, followed by Dreams Come True's "Winter Song", a Christmas song by B'z written by Koshi Inaba and Tak Matsumoto, songs by Junichi Inagaki, Keisuke Kuwata and Midori Karashima, and Ryuichi Sakamoto's "Merry Christmas Mr.Lawrence". The second half goes abroad, with Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You", John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Happy Xmas(War Is Over)", Wham!'s "Last Christmas" and Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?", and Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" closes the record. Two guests appear. Mr. Big's guitarist Paul Gilbert plays on the B'z song, and "Happy Xmas(War Is Over)" is a duet with the singer Miho Fukuhara, who had given Martin a CD of a Christmas song of her own when he visited Japan the year before; struck by her voice, he proposed singing together. The duet reached the shops first in the United States, as a bonus track on Timeless, the American edition of MR.VOCALIST 2 released on 3 November 2009; it was also the coupling track of Fukuhara's single of 2 December 2009 and the collaboration song of the Sapporo White Illumination. In December Martin made his first solo tour of Japan in seven years, the MR.VOCALIST Japan Tour, singing in Nagoya, Osaka and at Bunkamura Orchard Hall in Tokyo.