Favorite J-Pop Singles: Princess Princess / Seven Years After

There was quite a buzz back when girl supergroup Princess Princess decided to call it quits in 1996. Almost all the magazines covered some details about the last tour, and magazines like CD Data were particularly informative about the goings-on of the group’s final bow.

I remember reading with excitement the play-list for Puri-Puri’s Final tour, and at the time I remember being baffled at why they had decided to open their last concert with the song “Seven Years After”…

That was, until I SAW the last live concert.

The performance was SO ferocious that I was completely blown away. I could not IMAGINE a more kick-ass song to begin the final concert. Later when I thought about the content of the lyrics, it all made sense:

“Anata ni aete yokatta, imawa sou omou no”

"Looking back now, I’m so glad that I met you”

It’s almost like Princess Princess is saying a final farewell to their fans.

So it was a poignant song to begin the concert with, as well!

The impact this song made in the concert made me love it all the more, and over time, it has become my very favorite song of all time from Princess Princess!

“Seven Years After”, Princess Princess’ 12th single, off their DOLLS IN ACTION album, is famous for many reasons, not least of which was that this was the single where Okui Kaori chopped her  long hair and started wearing it short!  I expect it must have been quite a shock when she first did it! But by the time of their final concert, It was just the way I liked it, not too long, not too short!

The reason that I keep bringing that concert up is because the “Last Live” performance of “Seven Years After” has become THE version that all the others must compare to. The fact of the matter is, MOST, if not ALL of the songs performed at their last concert rival their polished studio counterparts (in my opinion, of course).

   (The concert performance is absolutely top-notch, with Puri-Puri very clearly showing their 13 years of experience onstage. From the opening of “Seven” through the classics “Go Away Boy”,”Sekai De Ichiban Atsui Natsu” and “Oh Yeah!” to powerful performances of “M”, ”Girl’s Night” and “Guitar Man” , an incredible Medley of Hits, and the sentimentally saturated performances of “Pilot Ni Naritakute”(!), “Fly Baby Fly”, ”Diamonds” and the great finale, “19 Growing Up”-An incredible concert worthy of bringing a brilliant career to a close!)

Comments from original post:·     

 

Yametekudasai wrote

Absolutely dead on with the LAST LIVE performance. Kyonchan has that powerful backbeat that never steps out of line. And Kaori's guitar solo is truly blistering! (an overused adjective co-opted by unimaginative music scribes; however it truly applies in this case.)

FWIW... I'm really fond of that action shot at Budokan. Even with the girly "princess" outfits they could still rock the house and engage the audience. There's really ACTION in that photo: Oh Yeah!

    * zdorama wrote:

I love the way that Koyko's frenetic drumbeat builds up and UP, till it climaxes with Kaori's guitar solo, that absolutely cool grimace on her face as she belts out those chords, while Akkochan does her traditional "rocking back and forth to the beat"!!

Notice how that crowd just ROARS when that solo comes up!

dayo ne!

    * dayo ne! wrote:

I couldn't have said it better, puripuri is still the best of their kind.

You are the one that got me into this group! For that I have to say

Thank you, thank you very much!

    * zdorama wrote:

I remember watching a Princess Princess retrospective on PopJam one Friday Night at your house, all those years ago...Ah, those were the days!

    * MorningBerryz wrote:

It still brings the biggest smile to my face just remembering those days of Puri Puri education where you were the teacher and I was the sloppy student who accidentally punched holes into the wrong side of the discography/history pages that we were putting together at your place. :P Watching their concerts and pvs cranked up at your place will always represent how Puri Puri became to be in my J-Pop/Rock fandom. Thank you for giving it another chance as I was too ignorant earlier on when you gave me those compilation tapes which btw are in hindsight, perfect for the new fan to dive in to the greatest female band Japan has ever seen and probably will ever see. If not for you...so much great music would have been missed, truly arigatou.

    * zdorama replied to MorningBerryz’s comment:

    We've always shared our favorite groups with each other, and I feel that the one who's benefitted the most out of introducing Puri Puri to you and Dayone is ME!

    Like, when I found a cool live performance of :Go Away Boy", though my first thought was, "My Gosh, this performance KICKS ASS!", my very next thought was "I gotta send this link to Morningberryz! I gotta send this link to Dayone! I gotta send this link to Saburo!"

    It is such a joy to be able to enjoy stuff from groups you love with people who appreciate the groups/artists as much as you do!

    PS: I remember when You loved Puri Puri so much, one night, you were doing play-by-play commenting online while watching the PLATINUM DAYS, at like 3:00 in the morning! after a whole slew of entries, one comment went something like "Why am I still writing about what I'm watching right now? It's LATE!" Ahahahaha

    * dayo ne! replied to zdorama’s comment:

Kick ass is right! in that clip the first time Kaori kicks up her knee and throws back her head you know its gonna be good, I was smiling ear to ear! Thanks my friend!

    * MorningBerryz replied to zdorama’s comment:

Oh no I'm much more in debt to your sharing Puri Puri!...haha we could go on and on. :P But I understand what you're saying...being able to share great music with friends really makes everything that much more special.

Oh that was some night back then...one for the ages! We really had a wild exchange going and in such rapid fashion too. That was really a lot of fun having such great comraderie like that and to have it all centered around Puri Puri! I find all Princess Princess to be "Level 6" songs!...heheh if you saw my level 1-6 explanantion. ^-^

zdorama

    * zdorama wrote:

Saburo ripped his DVD and now we are able to enjoy the performance in all its glory! ROCKING!

Favorite J-Pop Singles: Shizuka Inou / Nakitai Kurai

         Back in the days when my favorite J-pop group was the Super-Monkeys offshoot group MAX, (that spectacular group featuring Mina, Rina, Nana and Reina) I was obsessed with getting my hands on anything and everything they appeared in! This led to a lot of introductions to great TV shows that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise, including Countdown TV, Utaban and a variety-style show called YORU MO HIT PARADE
The procedure was like this: The show would invite a variety of guest stars to sit on the bench, and they’d randomly(wink wink) choose some new song within the current top record charts by spinning a wheel, and the guests would take turns singing the different tunes of the day. There’d be a whole bunch of different musical guests every week, but one of the “house” guests, that is, some of the ones who were there every week, were Hide Nakamura, TV personality Marcia, and...yep, MAX!
  I loved MAX so much, it seemed like very time they performed some obscure song, I’d love it so much, I had to run out and buy the actual single from the original artist! This happened quite a few times, and one of the many singles I picked up was a low-bass little number called “Nakitai Kurai” by an artist I’d never heard of named Shizuka Inou.(and haven't heard from ever since, either!)

This is another one of those mysterious artists where all I have to go on is the pretty picture of Shizuka on the CD single sleeve, and not much else! Checking in with the handy Wikipedia, I came up with INFORMATION, at LAST!


Annie Shizuka Inoh (Chinese: 伊能静; pinyin: Yīnéng Jìng; Japanese: Inō Shizuka) is an actress from Taiwan. Born on March 4, 1969 in Taipei, Taiwan with the birthname of Wu Jingyi (吳靜怡), she changed her name after her mother remarried a Japanese man and then simplified it to Yi Neng Jing upon returning to Taiwan in 1988 to launch her singing career. She speaks Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese, Japanese, English, and a little French. She married Harlem Yu (庾澄慶), a fellow Taiwanese singer and television personality, in the United States on 14th February 2000. Her height is 5' 3 1/2". She gave birth to Harrison on March 16, 2002 with husband Harlem Yu.
Wow! For someone I didn't know almost anything about, there sure is a LOT to digest!!!
I proudly present my favorite single from Annie Shizuka Inou: Nakitai Kurai!

Favorite J-Pop Singles: SMAP / Oretachi ni Asawa Aru

Oretachi ni Asa wa Aru was the very first song I ever liked from Johnny Jimusho’s crowning group SMAP, although the title was so long and full of confusing kanji, I couldn't figure out what the song was called, and simply referred to it as the “Some Guys” song.

The theme song for the Kimura Takuya / Hamada Masatoshi j–dorama Jinsei wa Jojo Da (Friends in Need, for you KIKU TV fans out there), there were actually two versions of this song, an album version as well as a single version, and they were both quite different in their own ways...

    At the time I fell in love with the song, I didn’t realize there were two version- When I first  decided I liked the song and wanted a copy of it, I went to my friend Golden, to this day probably the biggest SMAP fan I know, and he made a copy of the ALBUM version onto a cassette for me. The ending of the song went right into a song called “Anata No Yuuki Ni Naritai” by Mochida Maki, and I thought that was a PERFECT segue! Months later, when I found the SINGLE, I was disappointed to learn that the ending was different, and didn’t match my cassette version! Komatta! So two versions were needed!

 Just how different were the two versions?

  The single version begins with a staccato guitar-riff which leads into the song, and ends with a decidedly grungy guitar crunch. This one seems a bit more in the poppy style of most Johnny Jimusho groups.

The version off  SMAP's 8th Album TACOMAX (SMAP 008) begins with a drum snap that leads right into keyboards that take you into the first verse, and ends with someone (probably Takuya) groaning like someone slugged him in the gut! Also prominent use of saxophones and horns. Also, the song arrangement is different, and the verses/bridges are in different order!

  I remember we rented a MUSIC STATION Special and took the tapes to make copies of our favorite performers. We taped Namie Amuro. We taped Mr. Children. We taped Chisato Moritaka. We taped TRF. Then SMAP came on, and I said "Hell, tape this one for me, too", to which they went, "HUH? Are You Serious?!" I told 'em I was, much to their disapproval!

Of course, in the coming years, SMAP really grew as artists, and started releasing the most terrific songs! Even they had to admit liking them later! Nowadays almost everyone loves at least ONE or two SMAP songs, and many of these songs will probably appear on my blog, as well

Favorite J-Pop Singles: Chisato Moritaka / Kibunsokai

      One night years ago, a whole bunch of us who were fervent J-pop aficionados made our was down to the local japanese Karaoke place- this time, a room situated in the Hilton Hawaiian Village (the name of the place is lost to me), and the ten or twelve of us squeezed into a room and each of us began belting out his or her favorite tunes.


  The  great thing about this was that you got to share what you liked and got to learn a whole bunch of new songs as well! At this point, I’d just started liking Chisato Moritaka with her latest single “Futari Wa Koibito” and wasn’t too familiar with her back catalog, so when Ray (yes, a guy!) started singing one of her older tunes called KIBUNSOKAI, it was my first time hearing the song, and had no preparation for what was to come next!!


As Ray sang the catchy, very Beatle-sy tune, suddenly he sang out “Beer de KAMPAI!” and everyone in the room shot their right arms up in a “toast”, and as the song went into the chorus, everybody began waving their hands back and forth to the beat of the song- Eh?????? I was flabbergasted! Talk about being the kid left out of the gag! I had to laugh as another friend explained to me that the song was about drinking a toast, and in the promotional video, everyone holds up a glass and toasts to the beat of the song during the choruses… Then when Chisato began performing it on shows like Music Station, everyone in the AUDIENCE would shoot out their hands and sway along, too! Oh my gosh, this was such a happy, fun song, and I had to have it!

Of course, acquiring this single was no easy task, as it was an older single, and so I trekked on down to that old CD rental store (the same one where I found my copy of Eri Hiramatsu’s single) and was rewarded with my very own copy of the song!

Next, I rented a few older Music Stations and got two performances of Chisato doing Kibunsokai, and sure enough, whenever it got to that rousing chorus, everyone in the audience got their toasting” arms up and swayed in unison…I even remember one time TOKIO (those jokers) happily swaying along in the artist bench, much to the irritation of those sitting around them!

  Kibunsokai (Fine Feeling) was written by the guys of L<->R , and the song is about Chisato celebrating and drinking with her friend because her friend’s gotten the guy of her dreams- the twist is, Chisato’s liked the guy, too, but strangely enough, is happy for the both of them, and wants her friend to celebrate!

“Tomorrow, You’ll have a date with him.

Hold hands and walk side by side - (Darn You!)

Tomorrow, I’ll be all right…

Strangely enough, I feel really fine!”

It was quite a scene to see the entire audience do the wave on the Music Station Christmas special, but then came what I feel has to be the most incredible performance ever, when Chisato opened her 1996 tour concert at the Yokohama Arena with Kibunsokai, and saw the ENTIRE ARENA swaying their arms in unison…in was just awesome to see! Wow! What an Opening!

 On a subsequent Music Station Special, Chisato was one of the guests who were part of a campaign where fans could send in postcards, voting for their favorite songs from their favorite artists. The artist would then perform his or her latest single, and also perform the song fans voted their favorite. I think Chisato’s latest song at the time was “So Blue”, but then came the countdown to her fan fave songs, and the song voted as her most beloved song was, of course, KIBUNSOKAI!

A “Fine Feeling” Indeed! This is a song guaranteed to make you smile!

A cute NG moment singing Kibunsokai:

Favorite J-pop Singles: B'rouge / Growin' Glory

This is a single by a group that I know almost NOTHING about! In fact, the ONLY information I have on this pretty vocal duo is the info that is on the 3" single sleeve! So here goes: B'Rouge is a duo consisting of two vocallist: Ritsuko Kurosawa and Michelle A. Key. Oh, it also states that it is  the Campaign Song for "Mizun(?)" Mizun? Am reading that right?
OK, so how did I ever come across this obscure song? Well, years ago, someone at my workplace threw this song on a j-pop mix cassette tape for me, I think HE got it off a sampler they circulate to the j-pop buyers. I seem to recall "Itsumademo" by Chisato Moritaka was on that same sampler! After a few listens to that cassette, I had the single special ordered for me thru Tower Records, cause I knew I had to have a "hard" copy!
Anyway, It is a TOTALLY infectious catchy little tune, featuring some terrific voices, slightly reminiscent of Kohmi Hirose (for you Kohmi fans like me!)...check it out!