back number -- Doushite mo Doushite mo（どうしてもどうしても）

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Well, in less than a month, the Winter Olympics will begin anew through the joint organization by the Italian venues of Milan and Cortina. It feels as if it were only several months ago that I was writing something for the Paris Games in 2024.

Of course, with the Olympics being just around the corner, NHK will have its own coverage which means their own theme song for these Games. As well, the national network has been careful to categorize it blandly as "winter sports theme song", probably not to get the IOC's feathers all ruffled about copyright, official recognition and that sort of stuff.

This time, it's the pop-rock band back number that has gotten the gig, and although their "Doushite mo Doushite mo" (No Matter How, No Matter How) was only released as their 13th digital download single on December 27th, NHK viewers have already been hearing it for some weeks, and in fact, back number performed it on the 76th edition of the Kohaku Utagassen during their 2nd time on the New Year's Eve special. A suitably inspiring and optimistic number about basking in the glow of ultimate achievement after working one's tail off, it will hopefully get some or a lot of Team Japan onto the podium. Of course, I've got my own nation to root for as well.

Although I've heard about the band from southern Gunma Prefecture for some time, this is the first time for them to get onto KKP, and I was wondering about how they got their name. Well, apparently, the way it's been described on both their J-Wiki and Wikipedia pages, there was enough sturm und drang behind the naming to fill an entire cour of J-Drama. One big surprise to me that I discovered while looking up the band was that back number has been around since 2004 so it's already celebrated its 20th anniversary. Anyways back in the old days, vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Iori Shimizu（清水依与吏）had an ex-girlfriend who ended up as the girlfriend of a rival band member so he self-flagellated himself as a "back number" (maybe something like a "used tissue") and resolved to make his newly-named band, back number, better than the other band so perhaps his ex would return. Not surprisingly, that didn't quite happen and there were various disagreements and stuff on the odyssey to create a stable successful group over the next few years. Hey, maybe "Doushite mo Doushite mo" could also be the official song for back number's own journey. In any case, the current lineup also has bassist Kazuya Kojima（小島和也）and drummer Hisashi Kurihara（栗原寿）.

I've given my translation of the title above but the official English title for "Doushite mo Doushite mo" is "Want Want Want". Unfortunately, I couldn't find the footage but that really avaricious English title reminded me of one Japanese Olympic swimmer who had just earned a silver medal but in the ensuing interview, she cheerfully admitted to some disappointment in her results and yelled out "I want gold!".