The Nostalgia Series - Old drama theme songs: "Steady" by SPEED

You know how people say that as you grow older, you suddenly develop a tendency to reminisce about things in the past. There was a time where almost every drama theme song was a hit on the charts. There was a time where just listening to a song brings back all these memories of what happened in the dramas. Sad to say, the number of such songs I've come across in recent years has gone down so sharply that I wonder if it's because my standards have gone up so high after watching so many dramas over the years or have standards gone down drastically? It's gotten so bad that I take ages just to finish a drama review. Not just because I've been busy with work and so exhausted but also due to the fact that I hardly find a drama which I can rave about these days.

One night when I was so exhausted from working, I was searching for old drama theme songs on YouTube. That was when memories came flooding back.

As such, this is why I am starting this Nostalgia Series on the blog. Maybe you've not watched these "old" dramas which can be from more than 10 or 20 years ago. Maybe you've not even heard of these songs. Nonetheless, by sharing my thoughts with you, it might spur you to check out some of these "golden" hits (at least to me). If you are a fan of these songs just like me, drop me a comment so that I know that I'm not the only "oldie" out there thinking about the old good times.

First up, this is a natural choice for me i.e. "Steady" by SPEED. This song was the theme for 1996 TV Asahi drama "Itazura Na Kiss" starring Kashiwabara Takashi and Sato Aiko (19 years ago!) and based on the same-titled manga by Tada Kaoru which unfortunately was never finished because she had passed away suddenly.

Why was this drama so important to me? First of all, I liked this drama to such an extent that I lost count of the number of times I watched it. Back in those days where Japanese dramas were only available for viewing on expensive and poor quality VCDs, I actually spent a bomb on this drama's VCDs which were as blurry as they could be. Yet, I kept rewatching it over and over again. I can't really place my finger on why but even though I knew the story so well, I was hooked for some reason and just rewatched it from time to time. This also led me to buy the entire set of the manga in Chinese. Imagine 23 volumes of the manga and somemore, the Taiwanese version which was more expensive than the local version! And I was just a student then and had to scrimp and save to do that.

My passion spurred me to create my first website i.e. The Itazura Na Kiss Town which was hosted on Geocities then but since the hosting portal's shutdown in 2009, my website was also deleted. I did salvage the content but never found the motivation to recreate it elsewhere. To those who might have visited that website before, I think you might remember how no-frills it was. ^__^

Much as I liked Itazura Na Kiss, I never found the same level of enthusiasm for the subsequent remakes. To me, Naoki is Kashiwabara Takashi and Kotoko will always be Sato Aiko.

Given the significance of this drama to me, there was another reason why this song meant a lot to me. Back in the mid 90s, SPEED was the best and most popular girl group. I was a fan then (and still is, although not that fervent now) and listened to their songs every day until the CD was scratched so badly and I had to buy another copy for keepsake. The first SPEED song which I came across was actually "White Love" which I saw on Kouhaku and it was released later than "Steady". Then when I first heard "Steady", I grew to like it a lot, even more than "White Love". I guess the fact that the song came from SPEED was a huge factor coupled with my love for the drama.

For those who are interested in checking out this song, you can watch their MV here.