Puffy -- Circuit no Musume （サーキットの娘）

Puffy product placement and 'dorably dorky dancing! I give you my alliteration for the day. Along with the rolling fun of the song itself, the video for Puffy's "Circuit no Musume" (Wild Girls on Circuit) provides oodles of amusement, although having the heads of Ami and Yumi on race queen bodies was kinda borderline creepy.

"Circuit no Musume" is Puffy's 3rd single from March 1997. Written and composed by Tamio Okuda（奥田民男） of Unicorn fame, the song goes into the life of being a race queen, a figure that was (and may still be) part and parcel of the racing experience. Especially in the 90s, tall and long-legged and long-haired beauties in revealing fashion and heels while sporting parasols strode by the circuits and on variety shows. Methinks if Chisato Moritaka had been thinking of a different line of work...

The song was used as the commercial tune for Yamaha's Vino scooter line, and I think they were indeed used in the official music video....certainly Ami and Yumi were wearing the corporate T-shirts. I gather having "Circuit no Musume" sponsoring a line of putt-putty scooters must have further added to the daily recommended dose of irony. And according to the J-Wiki writeup, somewhere in the video, Yumi is rubbing her left leg as a bit of tribute to the fact that she had broken that leg some months before the release of the single when she fell off her bicycle; the appropriate lyrics are in there as well.

"Circuit no Musume" hit the top spot on Oricon, and later became the 32nd-ranked song of the year, making over a million sales. Like a number of other Puffy singles, I recall that this was also a popular tune at the karaoke boxes. The single is also a track on the duo's 2nd album, "Jet CD" which came out in April 1998 and also hit the million barrier.