The Golden Age of the Million — The Nights a Nation Sang the Same Song

There was a time in Japan when, walking through the streets, you would hear the same song drifting from somewhere. The piped music of a coffee shop, the ending of a TV drama, the storefront of a convenience store, and the karaoke boxes of the weekend — as if by agreement, people hummed the same chorus and bought the same single disc. In the 1990s, Japanese music entered an era in which it sold more discs than at any time in this country’s history, and in which more people shared a single song than ever before. Those few years, later called the ‘CD bubble,’ were both the summit of an industry and the last great season in which a nation shared its music all at once. Last time, we saw the name ‘J-POP’ born and the makers becoming the stars. That heat now swelled toward an unprecedented scale.

The Fire Karaoke Lit — The Invention of Singing Together

When speaking of the background to the run of million-sellers, the first thing many accounts raise is the presence of karaoke. The song widened its role within daily life, from something merely to listen to into something to sing yourself.

Karaoke itself was born in the 1970s, and in the 1980s the private-room business of the karaoke box spread. The current became decisive in the 1990s. When ‘online karaoke,’ which delivered data for the latest songs over telephone lines, came into wide use, a hit that had only just been released could be sung with almost no delay. To learn a new song, to compete with friends, to want to sing it well — those desires directly pushed up the sales of CDs.

To sing, one had to listen to the original song over and over and memorize the lyrics. So people bought CDs. Conversely, whether a song could liven up a karaoke session came to be counted as one of the conditions of a hit. A song with an easily remembered chorus that anyone could belt out — such songwriting was pursued, consciously and unconsciously alike. Karaoke and the music industry pushed at each other’s backs, climbing to the summit together.

The Tie-In Formula — Drama Promised the Song

Another thing indispensable in speaking of this era’s hits is the ‘tie-in.’ Placing a song as the theme of a TV drama or a commercial, delivering image and music to people as a single memory — this method functioned in its most refined form in the 1990s.

In particular, the Monday-night drama slot of a certain station, the so-called ‘Getsuku,’ is said to have become a stage that all but guaranteed a hit for its theme song. A song flowing alongside the emotional swells of a high-rated drama was carved into viewers’ hearts together with the story’s lingering afterglow, sending people to CD shops the following week. As a drama neared its final episode, its theme song would be at the top of the charts — such a scene was repeated season after season.

Among the works that colored this era was, for example, ZARD’s ‘Makenaide,’ whose message of encouragement was long loved by many and became a long-seller. There were also examples such as Mr.Children, which recorded millions one after another and is said to have set one of the highest opening-week sales in history with a single. Artists who stacked up consecutive millions, B’z among them, reigned as regulars at the top of the charts. It can be called an era in which the power of the song and the mechanism that maximized it meshed magnificently.

The Summit of the Industry — The Peak the Numbers Drew

As these currents overlapped, Japan’s music industry reached its summit in concrete numbers as well.

Looking at the annual count of million-sellers, what was only a few discs in 1990 became more than ten the following year in 1991, increased further in 1992, and from the mid-to-late 1990s a run of years followed in which more than ten million-selling works were born annually. Monster hits selling two or three million copies on a single disc — the double million, the triple million — were no longer rare. The annual sales of singles reached a record-high level in 1997, and the production value of CDs is reported to have peaked around 1998.

These numbers were not merely commercial success. Most of the nation knew the same song and could sing the same chorus — meaning music had become a common language binding people across generation and region. Television song programs and the year-end music specials drew high attention, and looking back over a year, anyone could share the memory of ‘the year that song was popular.’ It was an era in which the song stood at the very center of society.

Yet a summit is also a point from which there is only descent. The fact of having reached the peak was, turned over, also a sign that one could climb no higher. Everyone could sing the same song because so many people were peering at once through the limited windows of television and the CD shop. When those very windows wavered, the structure of sharing began to show its fragility.

What Those Who Stood at the Summit Did Not See

Looking back, the height of the CD bubble was a special season in which several favorable conditions overlapped almost miraculously. Online karaoke created the motive to sing, television imprinted hits every night, and a society with disposable income to spare bought to support it. Had any one of these been missing, a fervor of this scale could not have stood.

But beneath the feet of the people surging at the summit, several changes were quietly advancing. Personal computers and mobile phones began to enter daily life, and where the young spent their money gradually widened toward things other than music. The habit of renting a CD at a rental shop and copying it at hand was already deeply rooted. The very premise of ‘buying and owning’ a song had begun, unnoticed, to crumble.

Even so, most of those in the very midst of the peak behaved as if this season would last forever. Millions became ordinary, and energy was poured into polishing the formula for the next hit. Because the experience of success — strike it big and the reward is large — was so intense, vigilance toward the shifting ground underfoot tended to be put off. Yet it would not be fair to condemn this as anyone’s negligence. The situation in which the lives and technology of listeners changed at the root was, for everyone at the time, a first experience.

Those brilliant nights when a nation sang the same song — that memory still rests warmly in the hearts of many. Yet beyond that summit, where the highest figures in history were carved, the silver disc would quietly stop selling. In the next era, music would cease to be a ‘thing,’ and, losing its very form, would begin to search for a new vessel.