I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
Showing posts with label Every Little Thing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Every Little Thing. Show all posts
When it comes to the long-running prime-time animated series "Family Guy", I've been somewhat of an in-betweener fan. I remember catching the early episodes back in the late 1990s and enjoying the show for all of the pop culture references via their famous cutaways and it got to the point that I ended up buying the first seven seasons of "Family Guy" on DVD in Japan. Since then, it's basically been just the cutaways that I've been watching since they've generally been more hilarious than the main story which has often gotten a little too dark for my tastes in recent seasons.
However, one thing that has generally remained the same all these years since 1999 is the opening credit sequence with Peter and Lois Griffin making like Archie and Edith Bunker as they sing on the family piano. Plus, there is that jazzy and snazzy theme song by Walter Murphy that reminds me of another theme song from another much older animated series. Murphy, strangely enough, is someone I've known about since I was a kid (although I didn't know the name at the time) because he was also the fellow behind the disco "A Fifth of Beethoven" all the way back in 1976.
Well, years later, I see him as the maestro of the swinging jazz orchestra that has often inhabited the soundtrack of "Family Guy", and I've been a big fan of the main theme. In fact, years later, I finally got the album "Family Guy: Live in Vegas" just for a full version of the theme by Murphy, and he, Seth MacFarlane (and his multiple voices), and the rest of the cast don't disappoint. One YouTube commenter said he hoped that this would be the version that would end the entire show once that comes to pass. I wouldn't mind that at all either...having everyone come on stage to do one big brassy take on the theme. Maybe the humour in "Family Guy" is often crass and cruel, but when it comes to the Murphy music, it's all class.
Yup, I know...this is really a Reminiscings of Young Adulthood more than Youth, but I just had to include this one. So, what was being released in Japan when "Family Guy" made its premiere in January 1999?
Wow! I guess it's been quite a while since I posted my most recent Every Little Thing article. In fact, that article was for their "Every Best Single +3"BEST compilation all the way back in June 2020.
Additionally, I noted in that article that I would have to cover some of their material going into the 2000s. That's what I am doing today with their 19th single"jump", from October 2001. I remember hearing quite a bit of it back in the day, probably through the music video channels and covers of it on the popular celebrity karaoke program "The Yoru mo Hippare"（The 夜もヒッパレ）. I'd assumed that it was made into a theme song for some J-Drama but actually it was a campaign jingle for a Kanebo cosmetic.
"jump", which was written and composed by vocalist Kaori Mochida（持田香織）, always sounded a little different from their earlier hits, and perhaps that was true for their 21st-century material. The 90s part of their discography was more synthpop but listening to "jump", I realized that the song goes a bit more into rock and even Mochida's vocals get a little more growly here. The song was another Top 10 hit for Every Little Thing, by peaking at No. 7, going Gold. It also appeared on ELT's "Many Pieces" album released in March 2003 which hit No. 1 and became the 19th-ranked album for the year.
I'll be starting this BEST article with the answer to a question that had been plaguing me for some time. The band Every Little Thing (ELT) was one of the most successful J-Pop acts in the late 1990s, but for the longest time, I'd been wondering how vocalist Kaori Mochida（持田香織）, guitarist Ichiro Ito（伊藤一朗）and keyboardist Mitsuru Igarashi（五十嵐充）came up with the name. Before ELT came up, I'd always treated the phrase "every little thing" as an old-fashioned expression such as "Oh, and how is every little thing?".
Well, according to a Model Press interview at a Tokyo event involving ELT back in 2018, Ito explained that the name came from a Beatles song "Every Little Thing" originally released in 1964. When he, Mochida and Igarashi were with the president of either the recording or management company, each of them provided one word each: Igarashi said "Every", while Mochida stated "Little" and then Ito gave "Thing". And thus, a band was born.
And it was quite the heyday late 90s for them. I bought ELT's first BEST album, the cleverly titled "Every Best Single +3" released in March 1999, almost three years after their debut. To be honest, if I'd known how successful this compilation was, I probably would have featured it here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" a whole lot sooner. As it is, the Igarashi-produced album hit No. 1 on Oricon, ended up as the 6th-best selling album for that year, sold 2.1 million copies, and won Pop Album of the Year honours at the Japan Golden Disc Awards.
As you can see above, I've covered a fair share of ELT music but luckily, there's some left for us to peruse. For example, there is the group's 2nd single"Future World" from October 1996. I saw the Wikipedia entry for the band and one of the genres used to describe their music was synthpop. Although those banging synths were in heavy use, I never really treated ELT as a synthpop band, but "Future World" actually gets as close to that genre as I've heard them. Still, it fits into the group template of ripping electric guitar and fast-tempo beat; in fact, I'd say that ELT was closer to B'z at that time.
Hitting No. 20 on Oricon and going Platinum, the high-energy"Future World" was just the beginning of a lot of commercials advertising their singles so seeing the music video has brought back a lot of memories. According to the J-Wiki article for "Future World", the video was partially filmed on top of the 234 metre-tall Tokyo Opera City in Shinjuku.
"For the moment" came out as their 4th single in June 1997. Once again, a good old nostalgic video...this time, in the desert, and it looks like ELT ran into a lost group from Burning Man. This particular entry in their discography was their very first No. 1 hit, selling 688,000 CDs and going Triple Platinum. It ended up becoming the 34th-ranked single for the year. Considering the video setting, it's no surprise that the song was also used for an ad hawking popsicles.
Single No. 9 is "Forever Yours" from June 1998, and the sound strikes me as being slightly different from their earlier singles. Perhaps it's the synthesizers, but I think the song has more of a 1980s sensation. It also hit No. 1 and finished the year at the No. 51 position.
"Necessary", ELT's 10th single, also has that 80s sound along with that certain appealing percussive beat. Released in September 1998, it reached No. 2 and went Double Platinum. Looks like the band was making like guardian angels for the lass played by actress Mika Sakamoto（坂本三佳）.
"Someday, Someplace", their 12th single from March 1999 has brought back in a bit of synthpop for a song that I thought would have been great as a theme tune for a sports broadcast, but that's just me. Actually, though, it was used for a couple of different commercials, one for the Toyota Hilux Surf in that year and the Nagoya Women's Marathon in 2018. "Someday, Someplace" went Platinum as it peaked at No. 4.
One of the three bonus tracks that isn't an instrumental (and is one of the few songs in the ELT discography that isn't written in romaji) is "Kimochi" (Feeling) that was composed and arranged by Igarashi but written by Mochida. Actually, it's a cover for a song, "Don't You Worry" that ELT had provided aidoruHikaru Nishida（西田ひかる）under her persona name of panache back in December 1996 for her album "You'll Never Know". Alas, I couldn't find that particular original but I'm still happy that I could track down the cover. Strangely enough, that intro here sounds a lot like "Church of the Poison Mind" by Culture Club back in 1983.
Well, now that I've covered ELT's 1990s heyday, I will have to further explore what they pulled off in the 21st century.
Y'know, there's a lot about Every Little Thing's"Rescue Me" that floods my mind with nostalgia, and I'm not just talking about the fact that the song will be 20 years old in about a season. Yup, it did come in June 2000 as the band's 15th single, but I'm also thinking about the way it sounds like a Rebecca tune from the 1980s, and even the music video seems to be very happy in applying that morphing technology that had its heyday in the early 1990s to vocalist Kaori Mochida（持田香織）. Not that I'm complaining at all...Ms. Mochida will never take a bad photo no matter the hairstyle and cosmetics. I think it's the puppy-dog eyes.🐶
"Rescue Me" was written and composed by former member Mitsuru Igarashi（五十嵐充）, his first single for ELT since leaving the band. The song went all the way up to No. 2 and went Gold. It was also a track on their 3rd album, "eternity" from March 2000, and it was even used in a commercial for a laptop computer (which must have weighed like a ton of bricks compared to the ones that we have now). "eternity" hit No. 1 on the album charts and became the 16th-ranked album of the year. It also became a million-seller and even earned Pop Album of the Year honours at the Japan Gold Disk Awards.
Back in 2015, a small part of the anime-loving corner of YouTube had an explosion when the good folks behind "Hibike! Euphonium"（響け! ユーフォニアム）in its first season decided to surprise the socks off the viewers by having the high school band perform none other than "Rydeen" by Yellow Magic Orchestra. The comment "'Hibike! Euphonium' brought me here" underneath videos of the concert or recorded versions of YMO's trademark song should have been given meme status. To be honest, a part of me inside also threatened to squee when I first heard the marching band version of one of my very favourite Japanese songs.
Well, I think the same thing may be happening in 2018 although the phenomenon might be a bit more muted. Although I won't be seeing the final couple of episodes of "Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san"（からかい上手の高木さん...Skilled Teaser Takagi-san） until this coming Sunday, the last scene from the last episode has already gotten onto YouTube and it has already earned an "Awwww...." with so many Ws in it that it would go all the way from my computer down to Lake Ontario. I won't describe what can be seen so easily in the video above but let us say that Takagi-san got her second critical hit (inside joke) and a punch-in-the-air win at the same time.
What put the icing on this swoon-worthy cake was a cover version of an old Every Little Thing hit by Rie Takahashi（高橋李依）, the seiyuu for Takagi-san herself. Just the abrupt way it started when the character made her realization shot a lot of viewers including me right in the heart.
So, unsurprisingly, viewers of "Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san" may be flocking over to the original song by ELT, "Deatta Koro no you ni" (Just Like When We First Met), right now. In fact, I've already seen at least one example of "'Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san' brought me here" in the comments section. Released in August 1997 as the band's 5th single, this was another song that got lots of attention in the mass media. Hearing it once more got me thinking about the 90s again thanks to those punchy synths. Wow! They did sound like that back then.
Written and composed by ELT keyboardist Mitsuru Igarashi（五十嵐充）, "Deatta Koro no you ni" peaked at No. 3 on Oricon and became the 45th-ranked single for 1997 as it went Triple Platinum. It also got recorded onto the band's 2nd album"Time to Destination" from April 1998. That album hit No. 1 for 2 weeks, was the 3rd-ranked release for 1998, and currently stands as the 11th-ranked album in Oricon history by achieving over 4 million in sales.
Not sure how long the above will stay on YouTube but enjoy the not-so-full version of Takahashi's softer cover of "Deatta Koro no you ni". It is so Takagi-san and there's even a nice little shoutout to the opening theme "Iwanai kedo ne."（言わないけどね。）in the instrumental bridge. Apparently, it's been included in a release associated with the show, "Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san ~ Cover Song Collection"（からかい上手の高木さん Cover Song Collection） that just got on sale yesterday. I hadn't realized it but all 7 ending themes sung by Takahashi are cover versions of past J-Pop tunes. Will have to see whether my anime buddy will be picking that up since there were a couple of those ending themes that I enjoyed hearing over the credits.
Haven't listened to these guys in a while so I decided to pop "Every Best Single 2" by Every Little Thing into the player. Indeed, absence makes the heart grow fonder. It was nice to hear Kaori Mochida（持田香織）sing and Mitsuru Igarashi（五十嵐充）and Ichiro Ito（伊藤一朗）backing her up with the ELT sound.
The first track on their BEST compilation was "pray", Every Little Thing's 13th single which could have been one of the first J-Pop singles released in the 21st century since it was put out there on New Year's Day 2000. Starting off with a "Lamp Unto My Feet" organ riff by keyboardist Igarashi (who also wrote and composed the song), "pray" goes off into another uptempo and high-energy ELT round of happiness. Considering it had been 10 months since their previous single, "pray" was a nice way to launch things into the new century.
The music video makes a nice thing of transplanting the band members into different areas of Tokyo. I was quietly making my "I was there!" remarks while it was playing.
"pray" went Double Platinum and peaked at No. 2 on Oricon. By the end of 2000, it became the 62nd-ranked single of the year.
Just to show that Mochida has a sense of humour, she's seen here laughing up a storm as one of those monomane artists, Miracle Hikaru（ミラクルひかる）, does her impressions of a whole bunch of female singers including Mochida herself.
Getting past the 5th anniversary of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" recently, I started realizing that I was writing more about the songs than I had been listening to them...and no, I don't consider watching excerpts of YouTube videos as actually listening. Therefore over the last number of days, I have been pulling out some of the old albums and singles and throwing them into the CD player or on the LP turntable again.
One such CD was Every Little Thing's first BEST album"Every Best Single +3" which was a massive hit when it was released in March 1999. It not only hit No. 1 but was the 6th-ranked album of the year as it broke the 2 million barrier. It was nice to hear the old 90s Avex Trax band once more.
Of course, the first track on that album happened to be the first single that ELT released way back in August 1996, "Feel My Heart". Now, the first song that got me to buy their product was actually their 3rd single"Dear My Friend", but I do remember seeing the Avex Trax commercial hawking the band's first song with those panning shots in the desert for their music video.
I think I have mentioned it before but when it comes to long-established entities in pop culture, whether they be TV shows, comic strips and musicians, I've always been interested in their roots; namely how they were at the beginning. And so, looking at the video for "Feel My Heart", it was pretty fascinating at the start of Every Little Thing. There were three people for one thing instead of the perpetual duo that has been ELT for years and years (producer/keyboardist and the creator for this single Mitsuru Igarashi/ 五十嵐充 would leave in 2000). Vocalist Kaori Mochida（持田香織）looked a bit different: she seemed to have more makeup and bigger hair for that inaugural video. But that ELT sound was already there.
Still as much as I've waxed nostalgic about the synthesizers for Yellow Magic Orchestra back in the late 70s and early 80s, hearing those ELT synths and Ichiro Ito's（伊藤一朗）guitar also have me sighing wistfully for those Avex Trax 90s. It was quite the different pop music landscape back then with these small high-energy groups.
"Feel My Heart" got as high as No. 24 on Oricon and earned Gold status. It was also used as the ending theme for another old pop culture chestnut in Japan, "Countdown TV" on TBS, which is perhaps why I've associated Every Little Thing with that program. It used to be that the band was a perpetual fixture on the CDTV charts. The debut single was also on ELT's debut album"everlasting" which was released in April 1997. The album also did amazing business by also hitting No. 1 and breaking the 2 million barrier, becoming the 10th-ranked album for that year. Good things were coming for Kaori and company.
A couple of days ago, I met up with a fellow translator who has also become a good friend at one of the Touhenboku Ramen shops in Toronto...specifically the one at Yonge St. north of Eglinton which has come to be considered to be a second and less grungier downtown. I have to say that the chicken broth for the chain's ramen is quite good; I'd always been accustomed to having the customary pork soup for the noodles. The photo above is actually from September when I went there with another friend but the bowl I had on Wednesday afternoon was still just as tasty and even more satisfying since it was a cold day.
Anyways, my friend told me as we were slurping away that he was a big fan of the legendary band Happy End (はっぴいえんど). He had mentioned this once before a few weeks ago after that talk on translation that we had given at University of Toronto but he went into more detail about how he came to appreciate the short-lived 1970s group.
Years ago, he was accompanying a fellow friend in southern Japan in his car and on the stereo happened to be a tape playing of Happy End. From the way my friend was describing it, the weather must have been quite warm and sunny, and he told me that the playing of Happy End's music made for the perfect melodic accompaniment to their journey.
Although he didn't tell me the title of the song, I could imagine that it was most likely "Kaze wo Atsumete"(Gather The Wind) as originally sung by member Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）. nikala was the first "Kayo Kyoku Plus" collaborator to provide a Happy Endarticle and though I also like "Hana Ichi Monme"（花いちもんめ）, "Kaze wo Atsumete" is my ideal tune by the band. It is a song that I had heard before back in Japan as part of a commercial, I believe, and I was charmed by it back then, too.
Hosono was the one who composed the perfect-for-a-summer-drive song with fellow member Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）providing the lyrics. Now, I've never considered the future one-third of Yellow Magic Orchestra to be a great vocal interpreter of his own music but there is something about that low droning voice of his which fits the overall atmosphere of "Kaze wo Atsumete". That video of him and his bandmates in weird clothing performing the song in a huge arena to a poppier beat might have been fun but I think the original version from Happy End's 2nd album from 1971"Kazemachi Roman"（風街ろまん...Wind City Romance）is absolutely fine. The album was produced to evoke the more serene days of Tokyo just before the 1964 Olympics in the city, and "Kaze wo Atsumete" might have been seen as the nucleus of that theme. That one image is of kids running around on the field under a huge blue sky trying to catch those butterflies.
Little did I know that the song was also part of the soundtrack for the 2003 movie "Lost In Translation" starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. I saw that movie on DVD in my old Ichikawa apartment with my Aussie movie buddy, and to be honest, I didn't pay too much attention to the songs that were used in it since I was paying closer attention to the folks and the scenes. But all I can say is good on you, Sofia Coppola.
Of course, covers of the song by succeeding musicians were a foregone conclusion. Singers KAN and Hiroshi Takano（高野寛）gave their own whimsical take.
YUKI of Judy And Mary plus Kaori Mochida（持田香織）of Every Little Thing also performed their own lovely cover of "Kaze wo Atsumete".
Although with all things being equal, there are probably a number of folks who never cottoned onto Happy End, I still marvel at the fact about who was in this group: YMO member Hosono, prolific lyricist Matsumoto, crooning Eiichi Ohtaki（大瀧詠一）and veteran composer Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）.
Now with the winter not too far away, a little musical warmth and a good bowl of ramen will always be appreciated.
Years ago at the end of the century, I decided to give a Monday night drama on YTV a try. Titled "Border - Hanzai Shinri Sosa File"（ボーダー 犯罪心理捜査ファイル...Criminal Psychology Investigative Files）, it starred Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）as a criminal profiler who took care of the goriest cases. I don't think there were any aliens involved but there was a nod of the hat to "The X-Files". The show started decently in the ratings department although things started going downhill from there. Even for a non-prime time show (it was broadcast at 10 p.m.), the crimes were pretty dire. I gather that when the premiere episode featured a psycho who chainsawed women alive in his basement, viewers were not all that thrilled. Then there was the fact that Nakamori suffered some major injuries in an accident and then influenza so the series was cut short by one episode.
The only other thing that I remembered from "Border" aside from the chainsaw (and the woman who sliced off other women's breasts to serve in soup) was the ending theme by Every Little Thing, "Over and Over". Written and composed by the former keyboardist for ELT, Mitsuru Igarashi（五十嵐充）, as the group's 11th single in January 1999, I'm not sure if the title was meant to refer to the endless horrors that Nakamori's Kirie Sugishima underwent but especially after that first episode, I was quite grateful for the hopeful-sounding ending theme. Perhaps that was the aim of Igarashi's work here
"Over and Over" peaked at No.4 on Oricon and ended the year as the 69th-ranked single as it went Double Platinum.
Time indeed does go by...I just read on Mixi that singer Kaori Mochida（持田香織）of Every Little Thing got married a few days ago. But I still remember that young doe-eyed lady who, with her two male bandmates, were burning up the charts with their pop hits back in the late 90s.
"Time Goes By" was another one of those songs that just seemed to become part of the mass media landscape for months and months on end. I would always remember that part of the music video popping up on shows like "Countdown TV" where the band would just fade into that old-fashioned house as Mochida sang about regrets of a romantic relationship long since dead.
That long presence on TV was warranted since "Time Goes By" would eventually become ELT's biggest hit after its release in February 1998 as their 8th single, just a month after the release of "Face The Change". Written and composed by band keyboardist Mitsuru Igarashi（五十嵐充）, it went all the way up to No. 2 on the charts and became a million-seller, winning a few awards such as Song of the Year honours at the Golden Disc Awards. It would also be the ticket for ELT to get onto the Kohaku Utagassen for the 2nd of 8 times. And according to J-Wiki, their appearance on the NHK New Year's Eve special for that year in the first half of the show was apparently responsible for spiking the ratings to 56.5%, the highest percentage for a Part 1 in Kohaku history.
(Sorry but the video has been taken down.)
Well, many congratulations to Ms. Mochida on her nuptials. I had already known that she started her career in showbiz as a child actor but didn't know that she could enjoy herself as the current occasional tarento guest on variety shows. My impression of her had been that she would have shunned that sort of thing, but recently I saw her pop up on the Arashi（嵐）game show, "VS. Arashi" having a grand old time.
When I first heard trf's 15th single, "Brave Story", my impression was "Well, this is rather different." The TK Rave Factory was a singing and dancing unit that I had always associated with fast, uptempo and cheerful stuff. The guys who put some oomph into a Coke commercial in the early 90s and all that jazz.
"Brave Story", on the other hand, sounded like trf and Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）wanted to contribute a song to a James Bond movie right down to the title. Released in July 1996, it starts off with main vocalist YU-KI and her backup singers performing a bit of gospel before the music just blasts off with a melody of a suspense-thriller. Those first several notes have always had me imagining unmarked copters taking off on a black ops mission. I could hear the lead chopper pilot intoning something like "THIS IS GRUMPY TO PRINCE CHARMING...GETTING READY TO WAKE UP SNOW WHITE...PREPARING POISON APPLE..."
Komuro, as always, took care of the suddenly dramatic music and lyrics. And even the latter (co-written by Takahiro Maeda/前田たかひろ) read like something out of a melodramatic spy novel...about some fellow going off on a mission of sorts although the words aren't all that direct. The entire song made for a pretty fun listening experience but in a new way when it came to trf. And sure enough, I made a purchase. The song managed to peak at No. 4. It was also available on the group's first BEST compilation, "WORKS - The Best of TRF" which came out on New Year's Day 1998.
Cue ahead several years later. Speaking of compilations, it looks like there was a couple of tribute albums to trf this decade, including the 2-disc "TRF Tribute Album Best" which came out in March 2013. And on there, another 90s music unit, Every Little Thing, gave their own version of "Brave Story". However, instead of the full-on down-and-dirty theme for a Jason Bourne adventure that the original was, ELT's cover is a jaunty Latin-flavoured romp in the sun that has Kaoru Mochida's （持田香織）familiar and lispy vocals along with an arrangement that has echoes of 80s band PSY-S. It's also appealing in yet another way. For me, cover versions don't always work but I'm happy to write that this is the exception here.
I think Every Little Thing's 17th single from New Year's Day 2001, "fragile" has one of the best intros I have ever heard in a J-Pop song. That mysterious and haunting synthesizer series of notes that starts off the song just puts that introspective mood into me: Who have I hurt in my life? What did I do wrong? And then there is that guitar crash right after the synthesizer and at the beginning of the refrain that hits the message home.
The words of despair and hope in a relationship were written by vocalist Kaori Mochida （持田香織）and lyricist Kazuhito Kikuchi （菊池一仁）while guitarist Ichiro Ito （伊藤一朗）came up with the melody. It was one of those songs that seemed to stick around throughout the year, no doubt partially in thanks to that synth intro. And then there was the music video for "fragile" which was just Part One of a drama that extended into the band's video for the following single, "Graceful World". The rushed taxi ride, the rain and Mochida & Ito hovering over the scene like a couple of dark angels made for a pretty atmospheric mood, but again it was the beginning when Mochida appeared and seemingly came down from the heavens like a Harbinger itself while those eerie opening notes were played that made the video for me. There was also something about that very scene which almost resembled an opening credits sequence from a James Bond movie.
"fragile" quickly reached No. 1 and went Triple Platinum, becoming the 13th-ranked song of 2001, selling just under 830,000 copies and winning a Gold Prize at the Japan Record Awards. It also got ELT its 5th invitation to the Kohaku Utagassen.
First off, I'd like to say to Kaori Mochida（持田香織） of Every Little Thing regarding the set in the official video: Jay Kay of Jamiroquai called....he would like his sliding floor back, please.
In any case, that and the split personality nature of ELT's 6th single, "Shapes of Love" were the things that stood out for me. Every Little Thing was having their 15 minutes in the limelight in the late 90s as their videos got played all over the place on heavy rotation.. The sliding floor was obvious in the video, but I also noticed the melodic juxtaposition of the usual ELT dance-beat rhythm with a strangely happy-go-lucky refrain. That refrain sounded almost as if it were meant as a theme song for a variety show or a romantic comedy. And the song was actually used as the theme for the TV Asahi drama, "Kenshui Nanako"（研修医なな子...Nanako The Medical Intern）.
However, no matter the switch in musical tone, it's still very much an Every Little Thing song with the crashing synths and Ichiro Ito's （伊藤一朗）wailing guitar. Written and composed by keyboardist Mitsuru Igarashi（五十嵐充）,"Shapes of Love" was released in October 1997, it managed to peak at No. 3 on Oricon while going Double Platinum. The song, which was also a track on the band's 2nd album"Time to Destination", got performed at the Kohaku Utagassen by ELT in their first appearance on the show. And speaking of the album, it was released in April 1998 and hit No. 1 on the weeklies while becoming the 3rd-ranked album for that year. Every Little Thing was becoming a Very Big Thing.
As I hinted at in my article on the band's 3rd single, "Dear My Friend",Every Little Thing was pretty much everywhere starting from the late 90s. I think their most popular hits happened to be their ballads, "Time Goes By"(1998) and "Fragile"(2001), but I also enjoyed their early high-energy outings.
I wished the official video for "Face The Change" had been on YouTube since it seemed to be a regular fixture on television on the music shows, including TBS'"Countdown TV". All of you who have seen it would know there is some well-timed morphing going on especially during the refrain which made things pretty fun to watch. However, Every Little Thing's 7th single is fine to listen to as is as well.
Written and composed by ELT's keyboardist Mitsuru Igarashi（五十嵐充） for release in January 1998, "Face The Change" had a bit more of the urgent rock feel with the band's characteristic booming synths and Kaori Mochida's（持田香織）vocals. I especially enjoyed the down-driving beat in the refrain too, as Mochida sang about getting ready for that metamorphosis.
"Face The Change" was Every Little Thing's 2nd single to hit the No. 1 spot and ended up as the 37th-ranked song of 1998. It had also actually been used as a theme song for a TV Asahi 27-hour special programme back in the fall of 1997 with different lyrics.
Every time I hear the synth intro riff to this song, I always get reminded of that old song by Europe, "The Final Countdown", but that's the only similarity between that 80s rock anthem and this 90s pop song with the old Avex Trax sound.
During the early years of my time in Ichikawa, my ears were inundated with that particular studio's synth sound via groups like globeand TRF and artists such as Ayumi Hamasaki（浜崎あゆみ）. The band known as Every Little Thing was another member of that big Avex fraternity/sorority. Guitarist Ichiro Ito（伊藤一朗）started out in show business by playing around Yokota Air Base performing cover tunes by bands like Van Halen. Years later, producer/keyboardist Mitsuru Igarashi（五十嵐充）of Avex Trax was looking for a female vocalist to join him in a duo when he came across a demo tape sent in by teenager Kaori Mochida（持田香織）. Oddly enough, Mochida had already been a veteran in the geinokai appearing as a child actress in various commercials and magazine shoots before becoming a member of the aidoru group The Kuro Buta All Stars (another member would also have her 15 minutes of fame in the form of Tomomi Kahala) and then releasing her very first solo single in 1993, "Mou Ichido" （もう一度...One More Time). Igarashi was impressed with Mochida's "...strong yet sweet voice..." (thanks Wikipedia for the above info) and signed her up; he then brought in the aforementioned Ito who was working as a studio receptionist to help out on this new unit's first single. Thus ELT was born with their first single, "Feel My Heart" in August 1996; it did quite well as a debut, peaking at No. 24 on Oricon.
The first song I heard by the unit was "Dear My Friend" probably via the show "Countdown TV" where I came across a lot of the Avex Trax hits. I wouldn't classify it as an out-and-out dance song but it had that energy from Ito and Igarashi, plus Mochida's voice which was enough for me to go on a reconnaissance mission to track down the single. And truth be told, Ms. Mochida wasn't too bad to look at as well in the video. I had a bit of an issue with the syntactically skewed title, but that was just the English teacher in me.;)
"Dear My Friend" was ELT's 3rd single, released in January 1997. Written and composed by Igarashi, it was the band's first Top 10 hit, peaking at No. 9 and earning a Japanese Record Award as well as hitting Platinum status with nearly half a million copies sold. The single was also a track on ELT's first album, "Everlasting", released in April of that year, and seemed to fulfill the meaning of the title by lasting on the Oricon charts for 59 weeks. It was a great inaugural hit for the group as it hit No. 1 and was the 10th-ranked album of the year with over 2 million sold.
Of course, this was only the beginning for Every Little Thing.
Noriyuki Makihara（槇原敏之） was such a clean-cut young man back then, wasn't he? Anyways, for his 4th single in November 1991, between his breakthrough hit of "Donna Toki mo"（どんなときも）and his second million seller"Mou Koi Nante Shinai"（もう恋なんてしない）, he came up with this up-tempo seasonal tune in November 1991. As is shown in the music video, Makihara is as adept on the harmonica as he is on the keyboards, and the video is a nice piece of whimsy. It debuted on Oricon at 10th place, and peak at No. 5 as it hovered somewhere in the Top 10 for another 2.5 months. "Fuyu ga Hajimaru Yo"(Winter's Startin') would become the 25th-ranked song of 1992.
For me, the song strikes me as the fun-lovin' musical version of a day out having the proper fun of tobogganing and snowball fights, although none of that shows up in the video. C'est dommage!
15 years later, the pop duo Every Little Thing, with vocal Kaori Mochida（持田香織） and guitarist Ichiro Ito（伊藤一朗）, would release their own cover of "Fuyu ga Hajimaru Yo" as the coupling song (CD single equivalent of an old 45" B-side) on their 33rd single"Koi wo Shiteiru"（恋をしている....I'm In Love） on Halloween 2007. Their version is a tad more languid and has that ELT techno sound; Makihara comes in for a bit of an assist in backing vocals.
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