On November 14, 1996, シャ乱Q (Sharam Q) released NICE BOY!, a single about a man who desperately wants to be loved but seems incapable of understanding the woman he is pursuing. He declares his feelings, complains about her hesitation and even suggests that spending a night together would settle the matter.
Some nice boy.
Written and composed by つんく♂ (Tsunku♂), the song turns romantic frustration into a character. Its narrator is confident, impatient, occasionally ridiculous and completely convinced that his feelings should be enough.
She tells him she neither likes nor dislikes him. He hears an answer he doesn't want to accept. The same exchange keeps returning while his declarations grow more insistent. The joke is almost entirely at his expense: he thinks he is irresistible, but his own words suggest otherwise.
In 1996, Sharam Q hardly needed to prove they could attract attention. Namida no Kage had reached number one on Oricon that July. Their twelfth single, NICE BOY!, also marked the band's first appearance in a television commercial.
Two years later, Tsunku♂ made his debut as a music producer with モーニング娘。 (Morning Musume.) and Morning Coffee. His subsequent career would change how people remembered him, sometimes leaving his years as Sharam Q's frontman in the background.
Yet NICE BOY! deserves to be heard on its own terms, rather than as an early chapter in the history of Hello! Project.
Thirty years ago, Tsunku♂ wasn't directing someone else's performance. He was standing at the microphone, playing a man who couldn't take a hint.