Time Skip: J-Pop in Tokyo (January 1999)

January 1999.

Utada Hikaru’s “Automatic” was topping the singles charts with an awesome debut the previous month, while SMAP’s “Yozora no Mukou” was the #1 song of 1998.

KinKi Kids “Happy Happy Greeting” signaled in a new year, meanwhile January 1st featured the major label debut album for a new pop artist at the time named Hamasaki Ayumi with her album “A Song for xx”.

SPEED released their greatest hits album “Moment” a few weeks prior which debuted at #1 and sold over 2 million copies and became the best-selling album by a female group in Japanese music history.

B’z vocaliist Inaba Koshi released his debut solo single “Tooku Made” on December 16th and promotions for his single was still all over Japan.

Meanwhile, J-Friends (Tokio, V6 and KinKi Kids) were releasing their next single “People of the World” which would continue to raise money for victims of the Hanshin and Awaji earthquake victims.

Meanwhile, Amuro Namie who was on a year hiatus would make her return with her 11th single “I Have Never Seen”.

While GLAY promotions went up in Shibuya to promote their 16th single “Winter, Again” which was being released on February 3rd.

Meanwhile, the band Something ELse released their single “Last Chance” two days before Christmas 1998.  The group were featured on the popular show “Denpa Shonen” and were given a major label contract of five singles.  If none of the singles would become a hit, the downside of their contract, they must end as a band and change jobs.  The stipulation changed to if their next single did not break the top 20, then the band will breakup and they will pursue other jobs.

The group would perform in front of many stations in hopes to promote their music for the next three months.

Many of their single did not chart and so they released their song “Last Chance”, which was literally the band’s last chance to get a hit song.  The song debuted at #2 and was #1 the following week.  The single sold 1.3 million copies and the group won an award at Nihon Record Taisho and also participated in the 50th NHK Kouhaku Uta Gassen.

Meanwhile, Faye Wong’s album was being promoted in Japan.  Her “Final Fantasy VIII” theme song “Eyes on Me” would be released in February 1999 and would become the first song in video game history to win an award at the 14th annual Japan Gold Disc Awards and won “Song of the Year (Western Music)” in 2000.

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