is a song that Japanese musician

Miyuki Nakajima (born February 23, 1952, Sapporo, Hokkaidō, Japan) is a Japanese singer-songwriter and radio personality. She has released 43 studio albums, 46 singles, 6 live albums and multiple compilations as of January 2020. Her sales have been estimated ...

composed and recorded for the country's acclaimed television documentary program ''Project X -Chōsenshatachi-'', which aired on

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestr ...

during the first half of the 2000s. It was released as a double A-Side single with in July 2000 and reached the number-one spot after 30 months, becoming one of the longest running singles in history of the Japanese

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in ...

chart started in 1968.

History

After a couple of commercially lackluster studio albums were released, Nakajima left

Pony Canyon , also known by the shorthand form , is a Japanese mass media publishing company founded on October 1, 1966. The company publishes mainly physical home media on compact discs, including music, films and TV shows and video games. It is affi ...

, a record label she had belonged to since her debut. Double A-Side single "Earthly Stars (Unsung Heroes)"/"Headlight, Taillight" is the first release under the record label, Yamaha Music Communications, which was newly founded in 2000. Both songs were originally written for the TV documentary series which was aired on

. Akira Imai, a producer of the television program decided to ask Nakajima to write theme songs, because he was moved by lyrics of her 1998 smash hit "Another Name for Life". Imai thought that her insight on the song coincided with concept of a documentary that reports unknown activities of obscure people, who built up the modern Japanese society. The program premiered in March 2000, and her theme song which features her distinctive vocals widely became known. An opening and a closing theme on the program were released as the thirty-seventh single for Nakajima in July 2000, and both of them also appeared on her 28th studio album ''Short Stories'' released in November 2000. In 2004, Nakajima re-recorded "Earthly Stars" on her studio live album and DVD entitled ''Miyuki Nakajima Live! -Live at Sony Pictures Studio in L.A.-'', released in the following year. ''Utatabi'', her 2008 live album released on CD and DVD also includes a live recording of "Earthly Stars" performed in December 2007.

Reception

"Earthly Stars (Unsung Heroes)" / "Headlight, Taillight" debuted at the number-15 on the Japanese Oricon Chart, in excess of 35,000 copies sold. It became a smash hit because of the long-lasting popularity of the TV documentary program, remaining on the Oricon charts for more than two years. On 31 December 2002, Nakajima made her appearance on the annual NHK music program ''

Kōhaku Uta Gassen , more commonly known simply as ''Kōhaku'', is an annual New Year's Eve television special produced by Japanese public broadcaster NHK. It is broadcast live simultaneously on television and radio, nationally and internationally by the NHK net ...

''. Here she performed "Earthly Stars" from the tunnel in

Kurobe dam The or , is a high variable-radius arch dam on the Kurobe River in Toyama Prefecture, Japan. The tallest dam in Japan, it supports the 335 MW Kurobe No. 4 Hydropower Plant and is owned by Kansai Electric Power Company. It was constructed betwe ...

Toyama Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Toyama Prefecture has a population of 1,044,588 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 4,247.61 km2 (1,640.01 sq mi). Toyama Prefecture borders Ishikawa Prefecture to the ...

. Nakajima's performance recorded the highest audience ratings from the program in 2002. After appearing on the show, the single began climbing the charts again, reaching #1 in January 2003. The single was later certified to have sold more than a million copies.

Cover versions

Earthly Stars (Unsung Heroes)

Headlight, Taillight

Uses in popular culture

The song Earthly Stars was sung in

karaoke Karaoke (; ; , clipped compound of Japanese ''kara'' "empty" and ''ōkesutora'' "orchestra") is a type of interactive entertainment usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to recorded music using a microphone. The music i ...

form at the end of Episode 7 of the anime Lucky Star. It was sung by a character named Miyuki Takara, voiced by Aya Endo. (see also:

List of Lucky Star albums This article lists the albums attributed to the series '' Lucky Star''. Video game theme and character songs Lucky Star Vocal Mini Album is a video game soundtrack for the video game ''Lucky Star Moe Drill'' based on the manga ''Lucky Star''. ...

) The song is also used in the Suntory Boss Commercial featuring

Tommy Lee Jones Tommy Lee Jones (born September 15, 1946) is an American actor and film director. He has received four Academy Award nominations, winning Best Supporting Actor for his performance as U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard in the 1993 thriller film '' The ...

. The song Headlight/Taillight is used in the anime

Nichijou is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Keiichi Arawi. The manga began serialization in the December 2006 issue of Kadokawa Shoten's manga magazine '' Shōnen Ace'', and was also serialized in ''Comptiq'' between the March 2007 ...

(Part 79) The song was used in the 15th season of the show

GameCenter CX , also known as ''Retro Game Master'' in other regions, is a Japanese gaming-variety show television program produced by Fuji Television and Gascoin Company. The name is a combination of "game center" (the Japanese term for an arcade) and Fuji TV ...

, in the segment Project CX, a segment about

Famicom The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit Third generation of video game consoles, third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redes ...

peripherals. Miyuki Nakajima sings the song with lyrics related to the featured peripheral.

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Miyuki Nakajima, arranged by Ichizo Seo # – 05:11 # – 04:58 # V mix– 05:11 # V mix– 04:58

Personnel

* Miyuki Nakajima -

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...

* Ichizo Seo -

keyboards Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

, strings arrangement & conduct * Hideo Yamaki -

tomtom TomTom N.V. is a Dutch multinational developer and creator of location technology and consumer electronics. Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Amsterdam, TomTom released its first generation of satellite navigation devices to market in 2004. ...

, cymbals * Hideki Matsubara -

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

* Masayoshi Furukawa - electric guitar * Elton Nagata - keyboards, acoustic piano * Keishi Urata - computer programming * Seiichi Takubo - computer programming * Masatsugu Shinozaki - violin, concertmaster * Kiyo Kido -

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

* Jun Yamamoto - violin * Yumiko Hirose - violin * Osamu Inou - violin * Kei Shinozaki - violin * Yu Sugino - violin * Naoyuki Takahashi - violin * Kathrine Cash - violin * Tsunehiro Shigyo - violin * Keiko Nakamura - violin * Machia Saito - violin * Masako Mabuchi - viola * Joshin Toyama - viola * Gentaro Sakaguchi - viola * Kaori Naruse - viola * Masaharu Karita -

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G ...

* Tomoya Kikuchi - cello * Masahiro Tanaka - cello * Susumu Miyake - cello * Yasuhiro Kido - background vocals * Fumikazu Miyashita - background vocals * Katsumi Maeda - background vocals * Toshiro Kirigaya - background vocals * Etsuro Wakakonai - background vocals

Chart positions

Footnotes: Until expansion of the hit parade in December 2002, Oricon provided only the top-100 sales charts in general (except a more detailed magazine especially published for the music industry called ''Original Confidence'')

References

{{authority control Miyuki Nakajima songs Oricon Weekly number-one singles 2000 singles Songs written by Miyuki Nakajima 2000 songs