Pocket Biscuits -- POWER

For me, Pocket Biscuits（ポケットビスケッツ）, a group which consisted of tarento Teruyoshi Uchimura（内村光良）, Udo Suzuki（ウド鈴木）and Chiaki（千秋）, will always be close to my heart for their 2nd single, "Yellow Yellow Happy", as you can see from my purchase of the CD single.

However, in terms of the Oricon rankings, Pocket Biscuits' most successful hit was their 4th single, "POWER" which came out in July 1998. It's a song that I remembering hearing in excerpts on the ranking shows but for all intents and purposes, a couple of nights ago was the first time that I got to listen to the song in its entirety.

The reason that I mention it is that a few nights ago on the latest "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, vocalist Chiaki (the lady hasn't aged one iota) showed up for the first or second time to perform "POWER" alongside one of the members of AKB48 who is apparently a huge fan of the song. I can't remember the name of the member but I think it took a lot of her discipline not to squee once the performance was over and even then, I don't think she was totally successful.

Written by Chiaki with Pocket Biscuits and composed by Bakufu Slump's（爆風スランプ）guitarist, Pappara Kawai（パッパラー河合）, "POWER" has a beat which reminded me of Princess Princess'（プリンセス プリンセス）"Diamonds" from the previous decade after a slower-paced intro. As I mentioned in "Yellow Yellow Happy", I still think Chiaki has some pretty decent vocals for someone who has been known mostly as a TV personality, and apparently since her Pocket Biscuits days, she went on to release a few solo singles in the early 2000s along with a couple of albums.

As for the success of "POWER", it hit No. 1 on the charts, selling approximately 900,000 copies, and becoming the 21st-ranked single of 1998. In fact, Pocket Biscuits even got to perform on the Kohaku Utagassen for that year in the form of a medley.