the brilliant green -- Tsumetai Hana （冷たい花）

I didn't follow the brilliant green too closely as a fan but along with their breakthrough hit, "There Will Be Love There" from May 1998, I did like the single that immediately followed it, "Tsumetai Hana" (Cold Flowers) which came out a few months later in August.

To be honest, I had forgotten the title but I still remember the melody created by bassist Shunsaku Okuda（奥田俊作）which had that deeper growl in the guitars. Vocalist Tomoko Kawase（川瀬智子）wrote the lyrics about gradually getting out of a bad time with renewed quiet strength, and the combination of her vocals and those guitars has given me that nostalgic sense of J-Pop back in the 90s. Of course, I know that there was the Komuro Boom of dance pop and the return of a more disco-ey and glamourous aidoru during that decade but there was also that musical breather in the form of guitar-based bands like the brilliant green. Songs like "Tsumetai Hana" would be stuff that I would love to hear at home on a rainy day. Strangely enough, I think the leaves tend to pop into a brilliant green after a good rain.

"Tsumetai Hana" was BuriGuri's 4th single which hit the top spot on Oricon and later became the 62nd-ranked song of the year.