Chage and Aska | Profile Chage and Aska were THE J-pop success story in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The two natives of Fukuoka Prefecture first came to the public’s attention by winning the 1979 Yamaha Popular Song Festival, which over the years has served as the launching pad for several big-name J-pop acts, with the single "Hitori Saki (One Bloom)". The duo released that song as their first single the same year, and in through the '80s they gradually developed into one of the biggest acts on the J-pop scene as their music moved away from their folk-influenced beginnings toward straight pop. They specialized in melodramatic ballads like "Say Yes", which was a mega-selling hit in 1991mainly due to being used as a TV drama ”tie-up” theme song. For anyone who was living in Japan at the time, "Say Yes" – which, not surprisingly, became a wedding-reception favorite - conjures up memories of the heady days of the bubble economy, when the streets seemed to be paved with gold and the party was never-ending. One of the guests at the party was the Japanese music industry, which during the bubble era saw its sales rise by a healthy margin each year as the hit CD-single format and the karaoke-box boom helped propel acts like Chage and Aska into the J-pop stratosphere. Chage, by the way, is the one in the hat and shades. Aska is the guy with the matinee-idol looks and the vocal chops. But Chage and Aska weren’t just a singles act – on 1993's lushly produced Red Hill, for example, they showed that they could sustain listeners' interest over the course of a whole album. But Chage and Aska's star started to fade in the early '90s as Tetsuya Komuro and his stable of dance/pop acts began their inexorable rise to J-pop supremacy. The duo seemed to have lost their way, and Aska began paying more attention to his solo career (he had released his first solo single, "My Mr. Lonely Heart", in 1987) as the '90s wore on. In 1996, Chage and Aska – who were already popular in various Asian countries – tried to raise their international profile through an album of cover versions of their tunes by such artists as Chaka Khan, Maxi Priest, and Boy George titled One Voice - The Songs of Chage and Aska. 1996 also saw the duo became the first Asian act to do an MTV Unplugged special, which they taped in London. Since then Chage and Aska have continued working as a duo as well as on various solo projects, but it's probably safe to say that their days as J-pop superstars are behind them. |
