kamichan.com

As you may or may not know I’m kinda obsessed with statistics. Or rather: I’m obsessed with patterns, the kind of which one is most likely to find in statistics. As a fan of Hey!Say!JUMP I’m kinda disappointed at how 2009 went so far in terms of releases, but I’m also superficially following what’s happening in other Johnny’s fandoms and I think I may have heard that HSJ fans aren’t the only ones suffering from severe deprivation. I wanted to see if there’s a scientific foundation for these kinds of feelings so I looked at the releases of all debuted Johnny’s groups in the last 1¾ years, i.e. from January 1st, 2008 to September 30th, 2009. I only looked at officially debuted groups and left out any solo projects or special units or sub-groups like Shigotonin, Tegomass or Coming Century / 20th Century. Just the officially debuted groups from SMAP to Nakayama Yuma w/ B.I.Shadow.

The overall trend is that Johnny’s debuted groups have released a lot less in 2009 than they have in 2008. In the first 9 months of 2009 there was a total of 20 single CDs, albums and DVDs. With the last quarter of the year still ahead that number might still rise to 26 or 27, which is still considerably less than the 33 releases of 2008.

If we look at all the groups individually, however, the picture is somewhat diverse. There is only one group that has released more stuff in 2009 than in 2008, and that’s KAT-TUN (2008: 3 releases, 2009: 4).

A number of groups were just about as busy in 2009 as they were in 2008. These include Kanjani8, KinKi Kids, and TOKIO. Arashi is still one release short of the amount they released last year (2008: 6, 2009: 5), but the way it’s been going for them recently it’d be quite a surprise if they didn’t release another single before the end of the year.

And then there are a couple of groups that have considerably less releases this year than last. These are SMAP (-2), Tackey & Tsubasa (-2), V6 (-2), NEWS (-4) and of course Hey!Say!JUMP (-3).

However, one quarter of 2009 is yet to come, and based on the above findings I will now predict the releases we can still expect until the end of the year. It’s a bit like predicting the lottery numbers, but apparently that’s possible for some people, so…

There will be another 4 singles and 1 album.

The 4 singles will be NEWS, Arashi, Kanjani8, and Hey!Say!JUMP.

And the album will be… *drum roll*… Hey!Say!JUMP!

Yay! I just hope I didn’t jinx it, for my predictions are usually wrong. :/ If out of these 5 predictions only one came true it’d be totally fine with me, as long as that one is Hey!Say!JUMP’s first album.

Oh well.

In other completely unrelated news, Kamichan has a new favourite candidate on Swedish Idol. I think he’s a better singer than Felix Västerhamn, and he’s cuter too, even though somebody I know doesn’t seem to like his eyebrows (or lack thereof). Well, I must say I don’t give a damn about no eyebrows as long as he’s got pubic hair. XP

For your entertainment here’s Mårten Lindholm.

So there.

I’ll be back on Saturday with a new Hi!Hey!Say! Live Stage (hopefully). If that doesn’t happen (or even if it does) I’ll try to report news from Hey!Say!JUMP’s Tokyo Dome concert on Sunday as soon as it comes in.

See ya then…

Comments