Last night, NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）returned after a brief hiatus and this time, it came out as an extended 75-minute show. It's been a long while since I've seen an extended episode due to the pandemic and appropriately enough, the theme was the season of spring.
One of the acts who came on was Johnny's Entertainment aidoru group Snow Man and they performed a cover of the song "Hanauta" (Flower Song), originally recorded by their grand senpai, TOKIO. Their 25th single from March 2002, it's certainly one jaunty tune about loving the spring and the arrangement has that feeling of Beatles and Queen. I swear that there is one riff which was borrowed from the "Sesame Street" theme.
The lyrics are by TAKESHI and the music is by keyboardist and songwriter Akinori Suzuki（鈴木秋則）, formerly of the band Sentimental Bus（センチメンタル・バス）. "Hanauta" reached No. 5 on the Oricon weeklies and ended up as the 54th-ranked single of the year. TOKIO was even able to perform it on the 2002 Kohaku Utagassen. As well, the song was included on the band's 8th original album "glider" released in February 2003 which also hit No. 5 on the album charts.
"Hanauta" was also used as the theme song for the 2002 NTV drama "Nurse Man"（ナースマン）which starred TOKIO member Masahiro Matsuoka（松岡昌宏）.
Also, considering that Natsumi Abe of Morning Musume was in the cast, it's hard to believe that "Love Machine" is over 20 years old now.
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