Kinki Kids -- Flower （フラワー）

On last week's "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, I was surprised to hear that one-half of the Kinki Kids, dark-haired Tsuyoshi Domoto（堂本剛）, has been indisposed for almost a month due to a sudden bout of deafness in one ear. So it was only his partner, Koichi Domoto（堂本光一）, present on the show. I hope Tsuyoshi-san is well on the mend.

I think until Arashi（嵐）was able to get on top of the Johnny's Entertainment heap, the Kinki Kids were the Johnny's group that I could reliably depend on for comic zingers as well as music. It explains how they were able to front a late Saturday night music variety show for several years way back when.

And around that time, the Kinki Kids came up with another hit from their 7th single "Flower". Released in May 1999, this is a very happy song with a slight reggae beat which was written and composed by the music group HΛL, and its memory came back to me when "Uta Kon" devoted a couple of minutes to a quick retrospective of the Kids' music.

What I also found out is that City Pop guitarist Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）arranged the chorus sections. And even more importantly is that this was yet another Kinki Kids hit that reached the No. 1 spot. What I hadn't done in the previous Kinki Kids articles was mention that the Domotos have the Guinness record of scoring the longest consecutive run of No. 1 singles since their debut in history! Yup, they have released 38 singles including one that came out less than a week ago, "The Red Light", and all of them hit the top spot on Oricon. Not B'z, not Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）and not Hikaru Utada（宇多田ヒカル）can claim that record.

In its first week alone, "Flower" managed to sell close to 370,000 copies and overall sold a little over a million copies, their 4th million-seller. It would also become the 10th-ranked single of 1999. Plus, it was the song for ANA's Okinawa campaign.

"Flower" was also a track on Kinki Kids' 3rd album "C Album" which came out in August 1999. That album also hit No. 1 and went Triple Platinum, becoming the 28th-ranked album of the year.