Kinki Kids new single, Yakusoku

I was rather excited to see the e-mail from cdjapan about a new release, thinking it would be for the single for The SHIGOTONIN, so I was a bit surprised to see it was instead for a new Kinki Kids single. But the Kinki Kids single, Yakusoku (Promise), is set to be released on January 28th so it really isn't surprising it would be up for pre-order first. I guess I still have about a week to go before I can pre-order the single I'm now eagerly waiting for.

Like most Kinki Kids releases the single has two versions, a LE with the karaoke track to the title song and a RE that has three song tracks instead of two. I'm rather curious to how it will do sales wise as Kinki Kids don't sell in the numbers they used to so it's now quite possible for them to not debut at number one and have their record of number one singles since their debut stopped from growing anymore.

Yakusoku [Regular Edition] / KinKi Kids

Yakusoku [Limited Edition] / KinKi Kids


And since I'm already talking about Kinki Kids I'll bring up some musings I have about this year's Johnny's Countdown concert. In all past years it was Kinki Kids that had the Tokyo Dome concert right before Countdown but this year it will be NEWS as Kinki Kids will be at Osaka instead and not participating in the Countdown concert. So I've been wondering it they will be the only group that will not be at Countdown this year (excluding SMAP of course as they've never attending the Countdown in the first place to my knowledge).

In a way it would make sense if all the groups that debuted before Kinki Kids would stop doing the Countdown concert as the stage has been getting rather full over the years with the new debuts and will only get fuller as more continue to debut. But I felt the great thing about watching the last Countdown was seeing these older groups interact with each other as they seemed more willing to be goofy and have fun then most of their younger counterparts. So if they're not there I know I will miss them. I wish Johnny's would announce somewhere which groups will be at Countdown or not soon, especially as they've already put up the page for ticket information.

EDIT: Johnny's net has updated with information for the new Kinki Kids single and it looks like both versions will have three song tracks, with the third track on each different. The LE's third song is still untitled, which is probably why cdjapan didn't mention it in their listing.