Every Little Thing -- Time Goes By

Time indeed does go by...I just read on Mixi that singer Kaori Mochida（持田香織）of Every Little Thing got married a few days ago. But I still remember that young doe-eyed lady who, with her two male bandmates, were burning up the charts with their pop hits back in the late 90s.

"Time Goes By" was another one of those songs that just seemed to become part of the mass media landscape for months and months on end. I would always remember that part of the music video popping up on shows like "Countdown TV" where the band would just fade into that old-fashioned house as Mochida sang about regrets of a romantic relationship long since dead.

That long presence on TV was warranted since "Time Goes By" would eventually become ELT's biggest hit after its release in February 1998 as their 8th single, just a month after the release of "Face The Change". Written and composed by band keyboardist Mitsuru Igarashi（五十嵐充）, it went all the way up to No. 2 on the charts and became a million-seller, winning a few awards such as Song of the Year honours at the Golden Disc Awards. It would also be the ticket for ELT to get onto the Kohaku Utagassen for the 2nd of 8 times. And according to J-Wiki, their appearance on the NHK New Year's Eve special for that year in the first half of the show was apparently responsible for spiking the ratings to 56.5%, the highest percentage for a Part 1 in Kohaku history.

(Sorry but the video has been taken down.)

Well, many congratulations to Ms. Mochida on her nuptials. I had already known that she started her career in showbiz as a child actor but didn't know that she could enjoy herself as the current occasional tarento guest on variety shows. My impression of her had been that she would have shunned that sort of thing, but recently I saw her pop up on the Arashi（嵐）game show, "VS. Arashi" having a grand old time.