The Gospellers -- I Want You

 

Not sure if it's because I've been seeing groups such as The Gospellers（ゴスペラーズ）and Little Glee Monster a fair bit on television over the past few years but I've been getting the distinct feeling that acapella has become pretty popular in Japan. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of high schools had their own acapella clubs grooming some future hit pop groups.

Incidentally, I saw The Gospellers on the most recent edition of "Uta Con"（うたコン）and they were up there with The King of Love Songs himself, Masayuki "Martin" Suzuki"（鈴木雅之）, to do one of the old hits by The Chanels, "Hurricane". All I can say is that if none of the members of that group decide to appear again on stage and/or on camera, then The Gospellers can make for an excellent backup for the former lead vocalist of the group, having now been known as Rats and Star since the mid-1980s.

As I've already pointed out, The Gospellers have been showing up on television, especially through "Uta Con", on a semi-regular basis, and in an earlier broadcast this year, they appeared to perform "I Want You", their 5th digital download single from October 2020 and a track on their most recent album "Acapella 2"（アカペラ2）which was released in March 2021. Written by leader Tetsuya Murakami（村上てつや）and composed/arranged by Torus（とおるす）, it's another smooth and seamless take that could probably see itself on the practice list of any high school glee club soon enough. Although I don't listen to acapella all that often, whenever I do, I get some of that ASMR soothing from time to time.

Not long after the release of the single, Torus through his own YouTube channel gathered together an acapella group of women to perform "I Want You" as well. I don't know how well the single did, but "Acapella 2" peaked at No. 5 on Oricon.