℃-ute - Tokkaiko Junjou

See this post for more background on the group if you've never heard of them.

So the good thing about when I talk about a group's music more than once is I won't do the intro paragraphs again so the posts won't always be such a huge wall of text lol.

Tokaikko Junjou is C-ute's third major single and was released in 2007. For me, this is C-ute's first great song. I had said in my first post about C-ute that when C-ute releases great music, it's REALLY great. Tokkaiko Junjou is a fantastic song. It's actually sad that their next great song wouldn't be until 2011 with Kiss Me Aishiteru. The only thing I don't really care for in the song is Maimi. Yes, I do not like her. It's not her I dislike, it's her voice. It just annoys me so much. I'm very glad that the group was more centered around Airi's vocals as even when she was this young she was very good. Maybe that's the reason I don't care for the vast majority of C-ute's early singles....because it was before Chisato was a main vocal and it was pretty much just Airi & Maimi leads. For the video, it's just so much better than their other singles released during this year. The dance shot still looks kind of poorly shot, but at least there's no horrendous costumes or bad sets. In fact, the setting and the "storyline" of the music video is very nice.

Tokkaiko Junjou MV:

The single's B-side is Shiritsu Kyougaku. I admit I'm really disappointed in the song. Today is actually the very first time I heard it as I just received my copy of the single (and I'm just WAY too lazy/busy to listen to all of their B-sides on YouTube), and I was really hoping for a song that would be cool like the title track. I don't understand why I was hoping for that though. One thing I've noticed with H!P B-sides from the early years of the H!P kids groups was that they just aren't very good. Like at all. It seems like they're all just filler (well....I guess that's what B-sides are but still....their newer B-sides just seem so much better.) Maybe I just dislike the earlier B-sides because they tend to be slower than the title tracks and the vocals are just......ok. I always do have to remind myself that even though these girls are in their early 20s (besides Mai) now, in 2007, they were in their early teens so of course their voices wouldn't be at the level they are now. I guess that's a bit of the difficulty of not knowing a group from the beginning.

Shiritsu Kyougaku (audio only):

The title track of the release is easily a 5/5. The release as a whole is closer to a 3.5/5. Tokkaiko is amazing, but the B-side is really boring and just drags on. Just a side note: if any of these YouTube videos ever go down for any reason, just comment on the post and let me know so I can either find another video or upload the track myself. Thanks & enjoy the music!