Maki Ohguro -- DA・KA・RA

A friend and I went out to a Chinatown cafe after lunch today and we got into the topic of some of the Hollywood celebs (some of whom are making their arrival here in Toronto over the next ten days because of the annual film festival) who have ended up doing Japanese commercials. Of course, names like Tommy Lee Jones popped up and I certainly remember seeing Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone saying and doing some weird things all in the name of selling stuff.

I did not know about Edward Furlong, though. The young fellow who caught his break as the young John Connor in "Terminator II" alongside another Japanese CM vet, Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently ended up in a Japanese cup noodle ad soon after finding fame. The interesting thing is that he does look like a half-Japanese high school kid playing soccer.

The other story lies with the song that accompanied the commercial. The voice is instantly recognizable for those fans of 90s J-Pop, singer-songwriter Maki Ohguro（大黒摩季）. "DA・KA・RA" (SO) was her 2nd single released in September 1992, and in a way, I guess this was the "life saver" that got Ohguro to keep on with her solo career.

According to a 2016 interview on Cinra.net with her via J-Wiki, Ohguro had been planning to return to backup chorus work after the not-so-stellar results of her debut single, "Stop Motion" back in May of that same year, and so her recording team was broken up. But then, an old friend in the industry came up to her and asked whether she could come up with some sort of commercial jingle for the cup noodle ad by the next day! Not wanting to let the friend down, Ohguro was able to pull in one assistant and one arranger to help out and doing an all-nighter, "DA・KA・RA", a song about the mystery and demands of love, was the result.

Dang fine result for an overnight brainstorming session, if you ask me. It starts off with an introspective passage that reminds me a lot of the intro for Earth Wind & Fire's "Fantasy" before launching into a short but intense barnstormer of a tune that I think set up the Ohguro template in terms of her melody and vocals.

The Cinderella story concludes here with "DA・KA・RA" hitting a far more superior No. 2 on the Oricon weeklies as her first Top 10 hit and her first commercial tie-in. It even broke the million mark in sales and ended up as the 20th-ranked single for 1992...and remember, it was only released in September of that year. "DA・KA・RA" was also placed on her 2nd album "DA・DA・DA" from April 1993 which also hit No. 2 on the album charts and ended up as the 15th-ranked album for the year.

Probably the only down point for the whole affair, according to that Cinra interview, was that Ohguro didn't exactly pass the news about creating the song to the management company she belonged to at the time, Being, until the commercial started airing. That apparently earned her a solid chewing out from her minders. But in the end, it's the success that counted.