Morning Musume -- Happy Summer Wedding （ハッピーサマーウェディング）

Ah, happy summer 2000! Back in the days when Morning Musume （モーニング娘。）could have released Kleenex with their lip prints on it and it would have gone Platinum. To be honest, MM's 9th single, the sweet and cheerful "Happy Summer Wedding" is not one of my very favourite singles by the group although DANCE☆MAN was behind the arrangements of the Tsunku-penned song. I've usually preferred the more disco-type songs of theirs such as "Love Machine" but when "Happy Summer Wedding" came out in May 2000, the video of the girls in their harem outfits was all over the tube and that "para, para, para, para, para, para, pa, pa" chorus buried itself in my brain like Ceti Eels in starship officers ("Wrath of Khan" reference).

"Happy Summer Wedding" is all about a girl's feelings expressed to her parents just on the cusp of the big day. And I think the song would've made for an appropriate theme tune for some zany J-Comedy about the girl's harried father. Just imagine "Father of the Bride" with Koji Yakusho instead of Steve Martin.

The single sold just a shade over 990,000 copies, with it hitting No. 1 on the Oricon weekly charts and becoming the 15th-ranked single of the year. The song was also auspicious in that it was a transitional time for girls in Morning Musume. It would be the last single featuring 2nd-generation member Sayaka Ichii （市井紗耶香）and it would be the first with the 4th-generation members Hitomi Yoshizawa, Rika Ishikawa, Ai Kago and Nozomi Tsuji（吉澤ひとみ・石川梨華・加護亜依・辻希美）. Perhaps there should have been a torch featured in the video.

I remember when those four girls made their formal introduction TV Tokyo's "Asayan", which was the birthing show for Morning Musume. Felt like a worried father watching this quartet of innocent kids appearing nervously on the stage for the first time. The video below shows a clip from the program showing the actual selection of three of the teens.