Sing or forget. (A rant about other groups using songs from disbanded groups.)

A post recently went up in the LJ Ya-Ya-Yah comm asking if people (specifically Yax3 fans) thought it was ok for Hey! Say! JUMP to sing Itoshi no play girl and Yuuki 100% at their winter concerts. I thought it was an interesting topic but got put off quite a bit by all the replies saying that it was 'insulting' to Yax3 for HSJ to sing these songs.

I mean I do sympathize with being sad to hear another group is singing Yax3 songs, but to be bluntly honest, it's not like Yax3 are going to be able to sing them again. And with Yuuki 100% it makes no sense as it's originally a HikaruGENJI song and both Yax3 and HSJ's versions in the end are just covers. In fact you can even take that outlook with Itoshi no play girl, that HSJ's version is a cover of Yax3's. And to me it makes no sense to think the ones doing a cover are disrespectful of the original song and/or artists. I mean I understand not liking the cover, but to think to do a cover is an insult just doesn't make sense.

And it's not like this is the first or only case of a Johnny's group taking a song from a Junior group that it's creation caused to disband. In fact NEWS did the same thing. The song Private Hearts was a song very specifically created for the Junior group KKKity. In fact it was considered the 'debut' song for the unit as it was the first one they sung as a group and the lyrics were written by Domoto Koichi, who was in charge of producing them. But when NEWS debuted, taking KKKity's three Ks (Koyama, Kato and Kusano), they used Private Hearts as a B-side track on their debut single NEWSNippon, and of course performed it as a full group at their early concerts. So the use of Itoshi no play girl with HSJ is pretty much the same thing, minus the song being released as a HSJ song on a cd, though that could still always happen.

Honestly I'm kinda glad HSJ picked up the song. If they didn't then it would end up like all the other songs from disbanded Junior groups, set to be forgotten except for the lingering fans of those Junior groups. It's rather sad and personally I would rather see those songs be given new/continued life with other groups singing them instead of having them disappear into obscurity, as some of them really are good songs. I mean if a Kis-My-Ft2 debut doesn't happen like I keep praying it will, I know I'll be sad to not see them perform their songs again. But at the same time I would be sad knowing I'd not hear the songs at all again and would rather have another group sing them than have them disappear all together.

Johnny's recycles a lot of things costumes/group names but songs don't tend to be one of them. So by HSJ singing Itoshi no play girl it at least is keeping the song alive for longer than all the other Yax3 songs that have been shelved to be forgotten and collect dust in a song vault somewhere in Japan.