Sexy Zone -- Suppin Kiss（すっぴんKISS）

 

Up to now, my knowledge on Johnny's Entertainment groups coming into the 21st century has been mostly limited to SMAP and Arashi（嵐）, two popular units of guys who have since disbanded in the last few years. There have been other groups in the late Mr. Kitagawa's kingdom such as King & Prince, TOKIO and Hey! Say! JUMP, I know, because of their appearances on NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）and TV Asahi's long-running "Music Station".

(short version)

Sexy Zone is also a group that I have heard about and seen through their own shots on the annual Kohaku Utagassen and the above shows. They first formed in 2011 and had consisted of the following five fellows: Kento Nakajima（中島健人）, Fuuma Kikuchi（菊池風磨）, Shouri Sato（佐藤勝利）, Sou Matsushima（松島聡）and Marius Yo（マリウス葉）, although Mr. Yo left at the end of 2020 due to health reasons.

Now, why did I choose "Suppin Kiss" (Kiss From a Face with No Makeup)? Well, the keyboards and guitar work sound slightly closer to the Neo-City Pop material that I've been hearing recently and the song accompanied by the video kinda gave me a rather fresh impression of the lads (the soap helped). It also comes across as happy enough to make it as an opening or closing theme for an anime but actually it was used for a Kose Cosmetics commercial.

"Suppin Kiss" was one-half of their double-A 16th single "Karakuri Darake no Tenderness/Suppin Kiss"（カラクリだらけのテンダネス/すっぴんKISS...Tenderness Filled with Trickery） from December 2018. It was written by Kanata Okajima（岡嶋かな多）and Koudai Iwatsubo（イワツボコーダイ）with the latter also providing the melody alongside Simon Janlov. It hit No. 1 on Oricon and became the 41st-ranked single for the year, selling around 165,000 copies.