trf -- Boy Meets Girl

The first time I'd ever heard of the Tetsuya Komuro Rave Factory, i.e. trf (later to become an all-capped TRF), I was tutoring a couple of siblings here in Toronto. Their father had been transferred from Tokyo to live here for a few years, so he hauled the whole family over, and the kids needed some help in their English, so I popped by every Monday night for a couple of hours in the early 90s. The younger brother mentioned the band to me....at first, I thought he was talking about a new medicine, but then he showed me the CD single for "Boy Meets Girl" and lent it to me.

It was quite the revelation to me since up to that point I'd only known about Yellow Magic Orchestra as the Japanese contributor to technopop. And trf had the dance beat in there. "Boy Meets Girl" was a fun song to listen to, especially the remixed version that had been included with the original. It had that sorta "let's travel around the world" feeling of soaring through air, and I saw the cover with the beautiful bodies of the band members. Yup, definitely something different was going on in Japan during the three years between my tours of duty there.

The band lineup is: lead vocal Yu-ki, DJ Koo, and dancers Sam, Etsu and Chiharu. I don't think such a tight grouping had ever been made before like this, so kudos to the Svengali of J-Pop during the early and mid-90s, Tetsuya Komuro(小室哲哉） (keyboardist for band TM Network). Yu-ki had once been a dancer with another earlier dance-pop group ZOO before she became a part of trf in 1992.

"Boy Meets Girl"was the unit's 7th single released in June 1994. It became a million-seller and peaked at No. 3 on the Oricon weeklies. It was also the 9th-ranked song for the year in what was a breakthrough year; trf released 5 million-selling singles. Dance club music was starting to hit the mainstream. Certainly when I reached Japan later in 1994, trf was another regular guest to hit the music show circuit for at least a few years.

The above video is the Coca-Cola commercial for which "Boy Meets Girl" was the tie-up single. It was also a track on their 4th album, "Billionaire", released in July 1994. It went to the top of the album charts and was the 6th-ranking album of the year.