Morning Musume

Morning Musume is currently the most popular group act in Japan. The group originally started out with five members: Aya Isiguro, Natsumi Abe, Asuka Fukuda, Kaori Iida, and Yuko Nakazawa. Morning Musume was the brainchild of SharanQ's vocalist, Tsunku, on the television program "Asayan." In order to debut, Morning Musume had to sell 50,000 CDs over a span of five days. The girls met the challenge, selling out all 50,000 CDs in only four days. Morning Musume's first Single CD, "Morning Coffee" quickly made it onto the pop charts at number 6. After this single, three new members joined: Sayaka Ichii, Mari Yaguchi, Kei Yasuda. This brought the total count of Morning Musume members up to eight. Their first appearance on Hey! Hey! Hey! Brought the question of “Are any more members coming?” Their second single, Summer Night Town, edged up to number 4 on the pop charts. Then they hit the number 1 spot on the JPOP rankings with their third single, Daite Hold on Me. They were very immobile and kind of stiff during the Hey! Hey! Hey! Performance. They've since improved, jumping around and acting all crazy, and doing things that you'd think would be embarrassing, but somehow it all comes together. Kind of like Strawberry Pie (which comes later.) Ever since their first chart-topping single, Morning Musume has taken the JPOP world by storm. Anything associated with Morning Musume becomes an instant hit. I gotta admit, their songs are quite catchy. To make things even more interesting (or confusing), the members of Morning Musume started forming sub-groups, with names such as Puchimoni, Minimoni, Tanpopo, and Country Musume. The reason for these mini-groups are a mystery. To top it off, the number of members in Morning Musume has now risen to an astounding 13! After the producers realized that Japan absolutely loved seeing a bunch of youngsters acting childish and had singing talent, they must've figured...more is better! Why have only 8 youngsters acting all crazy when they can have 13! Being that members seem to come and go every now and then, who knows what the number will be in the future. What's for sure is that Morning Musume will remain popular in Japan for quite some time.