SMAP -- SMAP

Saw Takuya Kimura（木村拓哉）on TV Japan for the first time since SMAP broke up late last year. He looked rather...beefy. But I gather that no longer dancing all that often on stage or on TV may mean an extra storage of calories.

After hearing all those hits by the former residents of the Johnny's Entertainment mountaintop over so many years, it was shocking to say the least that SMAP actually had a theme song of sorts. Plus it had the simple title of "SMAP".

Written by Hiromi Mori（森浩美）and composed by Seikou Nagaoka（長岡成貢）, this Eurobeat-tinged musical dynamo was released in 1988 as a commercial song for Morinaga Milk Industry as you can see above when the group was a sextet and not the quintet. Ah, they looked so young back then.

Actually, their first official single, "Can't Stop!! -LOVING-" didn't come out until 1991, but "SMAP" was included as part of the "SMAP Medley" portion on the single. It peaked at No. 2 on Oricon. The song also got its album release several years later on their remix album "BOO" from November 1995 (peaked at No. 5 and went Platinum). Geez, I'm trying to wrap my mind about the fact that "SMAP" was actually born nearly 3 decades ago.