My Little Lover -- Destiny

Well, giving myself a Gibbs slap on the back of my head tonight. The reason is that it's been over 4 years since I've put up a My Little Lover song on the blog. No excuse for that since when listening to their stuff again after so long, I got those warm and fuzzy feelings once more that I've often gotten with that brand of 90s indies-ish guitar pop from acts like Mr. Children and Spitz. My Little Lover was also part of that sound and I even played "Hello, Again" just now...because it was really like hello again.

Just by chance last night, I came across the music video for "Destiny", My Little Lover's 11th single from May 1998, and that's when the need for the Gibbs slap arrived. This was a video that had a lot of heavy rotation on the music channels back in Japan, and there was that shot at the 0:03 mark of "Destiny" with the svelte vocalist Akko sitting tiredly on her chair wearing that short dress and open shoes which I think is the iconic image of the band. The words and music by keyboardist Takeshi Kobayashi（小林武史）were also instantly familiar, and all I could do was wonder how I could even forget about this one for so long since starting the blog.

In addition to the Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）dance pop and the rise of J-R&B and Morning Musume（モーニング娘。）near the end of the decade, it's also been the wistful sounds of bands like My Little Lover that get the nostalgic sighs emanating out of me. I think the soft whispery voice of Akko and the combination of guitar and strings are perfect here for "Destiny".

The song hit No. 4 on Oricon and later became the 46th-ranked single of 1998, going Double Platinum with over half a million copies sold. "Destiny" was also used as the theme song for the Fuji-TV drama "With Love". Hearing the song again after so long reminded me of another similar sounding mellow ballad, "Overjoyed" by Ramjet Pulley which came out a few years later.