I heard this one for the first time in a long while on the car radio last weekend. Definitely reminiscing here.
When this song originally came out near the end of October 1989, I had already been a few months into my two-year stay in Gunma Prefecture on the JET Programme. The thing is that the first time I got a good listen to Janet Jackson's propulsive "Rhythm Nation" single, it was via a Japan Air Lines commercial in which I got to see Ms. Jackson strutting it up with her squad in military uniform in an airport.
It wouldn't be for another several months before I finally got to see the award-winning and eye-widening music video. Music videos featuring a ragtag group of rebels attempting to bring light into a dystopia were nothing new by the end of the 1980s but I don't think anyone had ever seen anything this amazingly choreographed. Certainly not by me...before then, I'd only known Janet as Michael's kid sister and a cast member of "Diff'rent Strokes" on NBC.
The song and the video had such an influence on Japanese viewers that singer Akiko Wada（和田アキ子）practiced and performed the "Rhythm Nation" dance on the annual New Year's Fuji-TV program "Kakushigei Taikai"（かくし芸大会）which features celebrities of all stripes tackling feats that they normally wouldn't do. In Canada, "Rhythm Nation" made it No. 6 on the charts while in the United States, it peaked at No. 2.
So, what was coming out as singles in Japan in October 1989?
Kome Kome Club -- FUNK FUJIYAMA
Mariko Nagai -- Miracle Girl （ミラクル・ガール）
Such an iconic song and commercial! I always loved how popular she was in Japan(along with other Western singers like Mariah Carey) and she showed the love back, such as allowing Hitomi Shimatani to cover "Doesn't Really Matter" with "Papillon."
ReplyDeleteGreat clip of Akiko Wada. I'll always think of Tunnels(more specifically Noritake Kinashi) when I think of imitations of those iconic dances.
Yeah, they really loved emulating those dances, didn't they? I remember when Ishibashi of The Tunnels did his version of "Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer, and the man himself joined him.
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