Tegomass, L-R: Tegoshi Yuya, Masuda Takahisa
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Artist: Tegomass
Product Code: JECN-120/122
Release Date: 2006.12.20
Highest Ranking: #1
Label: Johnny’s Entertainment
Limited Edition: Photo booklet, DVD
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Johnny’s Entertainment had always had many of its popular singles written by Swedish songwriters. After Seishun Amigo by Shuuji to Akira became a major success in Japan and also a minor hit in Sweden, the company decided to promote itself more overseas. Tegomass was formed to promote Johnny’s Entertainment internationally. In November of 2006, they held a press conference for both reporters and fans, and released a single, Miso Soup, written by Swedish songwriters and sung completely in English. The single debuted at a surprisingly high #12 on the Swedish charts and enjoyed a bit of overseas publicity.
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Promotional photograph shot in France
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Artist: Erika Sawajiri
Product Code: SRCL-6590/6588
Release Date: 2007.07.04
Highest Rank: #1
First Press: 12 page booklet and bonus DVD
Label: Sony Music
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Erika Sawajiri has definitely become a prominent celebrity in Japan throughout these past couple of years. Her acting career has pushed her in the spotlight, especially due to the choice of parts she was set to star in. Consequently Erika became a household name, through “1 Litre of Tears” and “Taiyou no Uta”. Last year, during the airing of Taiyou no Uta, Erika would release a single as the fictional character, Kaoru Amane. To everybody’s surprise, this single would become the highest selling singles in the female category and sell almost 500,000 copies.
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Left: Kamenashi Kazuya
Right: Yamashita Tomohisa
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Artist: Shuuji to Akira
Product Code: JECN-77
Release Date: 2005.11.2
Debut Ranking: #1
Label: Johnny’s Entertainment |
With the conclusion of the popular school dorama “Nobuta wo Produce”, the stars of the show, Kamenashi Kazuya and Yamashita Tomohisa have formed a temporary unit and released a single consisting of the show’s theme song as well as a solo from both boys. Using their characters from the show Shuuji to Akira’s single debuted as the #1 selling single and was at the top of the Oricon Chart’s 999 top singles chart in 2005.
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Vogue 2004 feat. Ayu
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Artist: Ayumi Hamasaki
Product Code: AVCD-30620/1
Release Date: 2004.07.28
Debut Ranking: #1
Label: avex trax
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Ayumi Hamasaki is the petite young woman who is a giant in the Japanese music industry. Love her or hate her, she’ll always be remembered as a legend because of the astonishing records she broke ever since she made her debut back then in 1998. Back then she was the squeaky voiced timid artist with little confidence in herself. However those days are clearly over and Hamasaki’s confidence simply radiates from her whenever she is performing on stage. For the hot summer season of 2004, Hamasaki would release her exotic 33rd single with some extra spicy attitude to match with it.
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![LOVE [99] COOK](/img/aprilis/love_cook-love_cook.jpg)
Screencap of Ai-chin from the concert.
Exactly one year ago, Ai Otsuka’s second national tour LOVE[99]COOK began in Fukuoka on April 1st 2006. After a month, the tour came to an end on May 9th 2006 in Ai’s hometown Osaka. Although this tour only had 11 tour dates (3 less than her debut tour, JAM PUNCH), the concert halls are a lot bigger. And in a sense, this is like an “upgrade” from the previous tour. A DVD from the May 9 concert filmed at Osakajo Hall was released on July 26, 2007. Not only did the DVD debut at the #1 spot on Oricon, it was also the 12th best selling DVD of 2006. The oversea version DVD and VCD were released on August 16, 2007.
At first glance, the tour title ‘LOVE[99]COOK Tour 2006 ~Mascara Mainichi Tsukete Masukara~’ might seem very weird, but there’s actually a special meaning behind it and it can be broken down to 3 parts. The first and most obvious part is LOVE COOK, which is the name of Ai’s third album. In Japanese the word ‘Ai’ means love, which is why all of Ai’s album thus far has the word ‘love’. On an episode of Music Fighter, Ai explained that the word ‘cook’ represents her birthday, which is September 9th. In Japanese this is pronounced as Kukku (クック) and if you say this fast enough, it sounds like ‘cook’. The second part of the title is [99], which also represents Ai’s birthday. Celsius translated Ai’s July 18, 2006 dairy entry from her official site, which explained the meaning behind the phrase ‘Mascara Mainichi Tsukete Masukara’ which roughly translated to ‘I wear mascara everyday’. In that dairy entry, Ai wrote:
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