2005: Turbulent year for Morning Musume。

Happenings from surprising angles after 7 years of debut, a year of new winds

During the past year, the group’s leader changed twice. Originally, the second leader, Keiori Iida, was scheduled to graduate at the end of January and was to be replaced by Mari Yaguchi, but she left the group in April when she was photographed having an affair with a handsome actor during the release of a new song, and Hitomi Yoshizawa became the leader. A new member was scheduled to join the group to replace Keiori Iida, but the group held an audition, and to the surprise of the public, no one qualified.
After a second audition, 7th term member Koharu Kusumi was chosen to join the group, and it was also the year when the new Morning Musume began to move forward as the new Morning Musume.

January 19, 2005 [THE MANPOWER!!!]

The last single of Keiori Iida’s group, it was also applied to the cheering song for the baseball team “Rakuten Eagles” which was born in the same year.
Around this song, producer TSUNKU♂ started to produce more and more “surume” songs.
The song had an unprecedented tune, a strong rhythm as it was a cheering song, and the title translated as “Labor Power”.
It brought us a new wind. The song was sung by Hitomi Yoshizawa and Ai Takahashi, who were in charge of faking the song split, and the other members.
The song was written on the assumption that a new member would join the band as a coupling, but unfortunately no one was chosen, so it may seem like a slip, but it was a very cool and fun song, and it was shifted to the new member who would join later.
As for myself, I think Miki Fujimoto was a great choice to start the song.

Released on April 27, 2005 [Osaka: A Song of Love]

Rika Ishikawa was scheduled to graduate with this song, but an incident occurred.
In January, Mari Yaguchi, who had just become the leader of the group, was reportedly involved in a love affair and left the group. At that time, the group was in the middle of its tour, and the formation and song assignments for live performances were completely changed.
I wanted to see the performance of “Sukiyaki” and “Monopoly” with Mari Yaguchi, but it was not possible.
The name of this new song is Osaka, and none of the members at the time were from Osaka. Hitomi Yoshizawa was chosen because she is good at Osaka dialect, and Ai Takahashi, Rika Ishikawa, Miki Fujimoto, and Reina Tanaka sang the song together. The lyrics are written in Osaka dialect, but there is a little bit of Tokyo dialect in them.
The music video features a scene where the dancers dance surrounded by their names in romaji, and the costumes are different from those on the CD jacket, which is also nice.

July 27, 2005 [sexy and jittery]

Hitomi Yoshizawa, a 4th term member, and Koharu Kusumi, a new member, joined as the leader from this work.
It has been a long time since a single member joined the group, and since she joined as a heroine ace, she may have felt some pressure, but I thought she had a lot of guts.
She was dressed in a red fluttering dress for the Latin style song, while the CD jacket shows her in a fresh outfit.
The mystery in the lyrics is “sexy cookies, a frustrating misstep.”
What was the sexy cookie? Is it adding a sexy cookie? That is my interpretation.
From this song, Ai Takahashi became the center of the song.
I liked the way Miki Fujimoto sang “Sexy Island” in the big chorus and often imitated her singing at that time.

November 9, 2005 [Intuition 2 – The fish you miss is big! ~]

The music video for this song had already been shot for the coupling song “Love is an Idea Do The Hustle!
The music video for this song had been finished, but it was switched to this one on short notice, a newly created version of last year’s album “Intuition ~Time to Love~”.
Since the music video was also done in a hurry, it was finished with a live performance. The costumes were divided into 3 patterns: a pink idol costume, a gorgeous gold costume, and a silver-ish Chinese costume. The costumes were Chinese style.
The song is very bright and energetic.
The picture doesn’t do it justice, but all the limited edition CDs released that year had a CD case inside a folding case that looked like a paper box.

The golden age of Morning Musume。 Everyone who was a student or an adult at that time would be proud of Morning Musume。 Morning Musume was so strong that anyone who was a student or an adult at that time would be proud to say that Morning Musume was the top idol at that time.
There were some happenings at the beginning of the year and in the spring, but we overcame them and new members were added to the group, and I think Morning Musume。 I think that Morning Musume。