Morning Musume -- Love Machine (LOVEマシーン）

And in the beginning, there was Tsunku. And Tsunku said, "Let there be Morning Musume!" 

Anyone who was in Japan in the late 90s and early 00s knows of the genesis of Hello Project's biggest creation by rock singer-turned-J-POP-Svengali Tsunku（つんく）. On the Sunday night TV Tokyo variety show, "Asayan", the lead singer of Osaka band Sharan-Q（シャ乱Ｑ）had been searching for a young girl to mold into a successful aidoru, only to take the runners-up instead and create the aidoru group which would become Morning Musume（モーニング娘。）in 1997. The original five were: Asuka Fukuda（福田明日香）, Yuko Nakazawa（中澤裕子）, Aya Ishiguro（石黒彩）, Kaori Iida（飯田香織） and Natsumi Abe（安部なつみ）. The little group-that-could gained some fair success over the next couple of years with their brand of bubblegum pop. But personnel changes were in store for them: three more girls would join the group the following year, and then in 1999, original member Fukuda would leave, or in the MM parlance, "graduate". And then, a few months later, lanky 13-year-old Maki Goto（後藤真希）would join the group.

But it was the 7th single by Morning Musume, "Love Machine", released in September 1999, which had the needed blast-off breakthrough effect. Written and composed by Tsunku and arranged by Dance☆Man, the five-and-a-half-minute disco-funk song got everyone to take notice of the group, and within a few months, the song even became the 7th-ranked song of the year. Even more importantly, karaoke boxes and year-end parties were humming with "Love Machine"(yup, I'll put up my hand and say that I also indulged). For Morning Musume, it was their first million-seller that had a run at the top spot of Oricon for three straight weeks.

The song created some pretty big waves. It got a songwriting award at The Japan Record Awards for 1999, and also got the Musume an invitation to the Kohaku Utagassen. And in addition, the added exposure and their subsequent hits translated into their own variety shows all over the Japanese networks for the next few years, including their flagship one on TV Tokyo on Sunday morning. And according to J-Wiki, one other consequence was that leader Yuko Nakazawa first started thinking about leaving the group with "Love Machine", citing that she couldn't really take the increased choreography although she would still hoof it like a real trouper for a few more hit songs before finally passing the baton onto Kaori Iida.

Morning Musume -- Love Machine
(top row left to right: Kaori Iida, Kei Yasuda, Yuko Nakazawa, Aya Ishiguro
bottom row left to right: Mari Yaguchi, Natsumi Abe, Maki Goto, Sayaka Ichii)