Morning Musume By JPop Bands Published: January 4, 2008
Morning Musume is an extremely popular all-girl group. They are the flagship group of the Hello! Project , a group that has dozens of different singing and entertainment groups underneath them, and they are seen as the best selling female group in Japan. In 1997, Tsunku, a well-known Japanese producer, started looking for a female singer for Sharan Q, a band he was running. He took the auditions to Asayan, a Japanese television show. After the show aired, Tsunku decided to change his plans and to make an all-girls group with the five runners up. He told them that if they sold 50,000 copies of their demo single, Ai no Tane, he would produce them as a group.
The original girls, Yuko Nakazawa, Kaori Iida, Asuka Fukuda, Natsumi Abe, and Aya Ishiguro managed to sell more than 50,000 copies and Tsunku made good on his word. Their first real single, Morning Coffee, was released in 1998 and made it to number six on the charts. After this, three new members, Sayaka Ichii, Mari Yaguchi, and Kei Yasuda, joined the group. Tsunku chose to make a smaller group out of Morning Matsume, and had Aya Ishiguro, Mari Yaguchi, and Kaori Iida form the group known as Tanpopo.
Girls in the group came and went, and as each girl leaves the group to go on and do other things, she would have a graduation ceremony. Often girls were added to the group using contests, much in the same way that the first girls were chosen for the group. In 2007, two Chinese girls were added as “exchange students”. This was to help the group find more success in Asia. Many of the girls, once they left to become solo artists, would still work under the same label and would be involved in the Hello! Project on different levels. So far, Morning Musume has had 25 members. The current members in the group are Ai Takahashi, Risa Niigaki, Eri Kamei, Sayumi Michishige, Reina Tanaka, Koharu Kusumi, Aika Mitsui, Li Chun, and Qian Lin.
Albums
First Time • Released July of 1998 Second Morning • Released July 1999 3rd Love Paradise • Released March 2000 Best! Morning Musume 1 • Released January of 2001 4th Ikimasshoi • Released March 2002 No. 4 • Released March 2004 Best! Morning Musume 2 • Released March of 2004 Ai no Dai 6 Kan • Released December of 2004 Rainbow 7 • Released February of 2006 7.5 Fuyu Fuyu Morning Musume Mini! • Released December of 2006 Sexy 8 Beat • Released March of 2007
