C.C. Girls -- Namida Nashi ja Ienai（涙なしじゃ言えない）

 

Although I couldn't find the actual footage of it, the first time that I had ever heard of the group C.C. Girls（C.C.ガールズ）was actually via a "Crayon Shin-chan"（クレヨンしんちゃん）episode in which the main character was getting hot and bothered over the ladies. Strangely enough, we saw this through a VHS video at one of our JCSA weekly video meets at the University of Toronto in the early 1990s.

Looking at the above video where C.C. Girls were being introduced, there is a good dollop of nostalgia watching them come out with those sauvage hairdos and the dance club fashion. And hey, one of them was playing Super Mario World! As one commenter has pointed out, "...this is the most 90s thing ever".

If I've interpreted the J-Wiki article correctly, C.C. Girls had their origins through something called the Japan Beauty Awards in 1990 from where Noriko Aota（青田典子）, Noriko Harada（原田徳子）, Rie Fujiwara（藤原理恵）and Yuko Fujimori（藤森夕子）began the group. Because of their appearances as singers and variety show guests, this started off the so-called "sexy group" boom of the 1990s which included units such as Giri Giri☆GIRLS（ギリギリガールズ）and T-Backs in comparison with the conventional aidoru groups such as CoCo and Ribbon. Apparently at first, they were called D.D. Gaps but to match that Cool and Classy image, their name was changed to C.C. Girls sometime early in 1992. That combination of initials and noun was inspired by B.B. Queens who had 1990's biggest hit song, "Odoru Ponpokorin" （おどるポンポコリン）.

Their 5th single under either the D.D. Gaps or C.C. Girls banner was "Namida Nashi ja Ienai" (Can't Say It Without Tears) from March 1993. I may have to ask for some help from Marcos V. and/or any other KKP reader/commenter who has some additional knowledge about dance music since I'm not quite sure what this pattern of beats underlying Koji Makaino's（馬飼野康二）melody and Satoshi Nakamura's（中村哲）arrangement is. I can hear some of that early 90s City Pop along with perhaps Eurobeat from that time period. Maybe it can be likened to some of the danceable R&B from the United States at the same time as well but it's a melange that perhaps one of you guys can deconstruct for me. Goro Matsui（松井五郎）provided the lyrics.

Here they are performing "Namida Nashi ja Ienai" on "Super Jockey", one of Beat Takeshi's variety programs that used to be televised at about the same time that I'm actually typing this up, namely in the early afternoon on Sundays. I don't know how the song did on Oricon.

A slow changing of the guard regarding the members began around 1995 with a second generation being completed by 1998. C.C. Girls finally disbanded in 2003, but C.C. Girls 3 rose up in late 2019 with a whole new slate of members. As for original leader Aota, she would release some music on her own and provide some photobooks. In 2010, she married Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）vocalist Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二）and suspended her own activities to support him at home and on concert tours.