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It’s been reported that TM NETWORK will appear on NHK General’s “SONGS” on September 3, their first music-show appearance in 12 years, where they’ll share the behind-the-scenes story of how their signature hit “Get Wild” came to be. On 5ch, a comment that the band was “starting to look like a Get Wild one-hit wonder” kicked off a wave of posts championing their other classic songs, while the thread also lit up with behind-the-scenes stories from the Hong Kong music-video shoot and talk of former support members B’z’s Tak Matsumoto and access’s Daisuke Asakura.
Wed, Aug 26, 2:52 PM
TMNETWORK, making its first music-show appearance in 12 years, will debut on the NHK General music program “SONGS” (Thursdays, 10:00 PM), airing September 3.
TMNETWORK — the trio of Tetsuya Komuro, Takashi Utsunomiya, and Naoto Kine, who debuted in 1984 — took the music scene by storm with an innovative sound built on synthesizers and computers. This special feature spotlights the group who, through countless pioneering efforts, laid the groundwork for today’s J-POP.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
I'm a Self Control fan myself
Honestly I'm not even that into Get Wild
My favorite is DIVE INTO YOUR BODY
I want them to spill the secret behind that one
They had no budget, so they went with cheap, hassle-free location shooting — just a one-night trip to Hong Kong to film it
They literally just rolled camera in the streets, so the passersby are real bystanders who had no clue what was going on
They went deep into the backstory on that 2-hour TM special on BS-TBS yesterday.
Go watch it on TVer.
Same deal as Misato Watanabe being pegged as a one-hit wonder for My Revolution
Doesn't really mean anything
That's not true at all. The City Hunter tie-in carries a lot of weight
They've also got a Gundam ending theme to their name
There's also a theory that BEYOND THE TIME makes them a two-hit wonder
They switched back to TM NETWORK when they reunited, but this year, for whatever reason, they renamed themselves "TMNETWORK" with no space
If they'd gone with Be Together instead, TM would've earned even more respect
Honestly their single picks were just bad across the board
If they'd released something like Time Passed Me By as a single, it probably would've been a hit
B'z's Tak Matsumoto
access's Daisuke Asakura
Matsumoto's break actually started as a support member for Mari Hamada
Daisuke Asakura, of all people — and he used to just be a YAMAHA synth operator
I heard access wrote a song called Decade&XXX to celebrate TM's 10th anniversary
Really liked that one
They've reunited and are still active now
Shame they went on hiatus to go solo right when they were popular
B'z, though — say what you will, but it's impressive how they've stayed on top this whole time
That's from their "Japanese Duran Duran" era
That style suited them, but the rebrand into TMN didn't quite land
That mystery Chinese guy is getting cropped out right on schedule lol
has to be a top-3 pick in Japanese music history
Still hasn't lost its shine after almost 40 years
Why is the volume on that so low?
Vocals: Utsunomiya
Keys: Komuro
Guitar: Matsumoto
Bass: Koki
Drums: Seijun
What a lineup
Kendai Takasaki, right?
Be Together
The old lady stuffed in the fridge is straight-up horror
What even was that about
It was "SF Rock Station"
Reception was bad in Tokyo but I taped it every week anyway
Hamburger steak & crab cream croquette
That'd be "Girlfriend"
Isn't it "Seven Days War" lol
Guess it's all thanks to City Hunter
Not just that
The karaoke royalties from BE TOGETHER and BEYOND THE TIME add up quite a bit too
If we're talking City Hunter, it should be "Still Love Her"
Makes you wonder which one pulls in more, that or Gundam's "Beyond the Time"
Apparently they re-recorded it last year for GQuuuuuuX
"Kimochi Ii Koi Shitai!" ("I Want a Feel-Good Romance!")
Background and Key Points
TM NETWORK isn’t a random synth-pop act — they’re one of the founding acts of Komuro Tetsuya’s production empire, and the connection matters for context: this is the same Komuro who would go on to define 1990s J-POP through TK-produced acts (globe, Namie Amuro, trf) before his career later collapsed in scandal. TM NETWORK (Utsunomiya on vocals, Kine on guitar, Komuro on keys) debuted in 1984 as a pioneer of computer/synth-driven pop, well before that sound was mainstream in Japan. “Get Wild,” their most famous song, is inseparable from “City Hunter” — it closed out the anime for years and has enjoyed an unusually long shelf life through repeated re-releases and remixes tied to City Hunter films, which is why it eclipses the rest of their catalog in casual recognition despite the band having a much deeper body of work.
The thread’s actual disagreement isn’t about whether Get Wild is good — nobody argues that — it’s about how unfair the “one-hit wonder” framing is. Posters split between defending specific deep cuts (Self Control, DIVE INTO YOUR BODY, Time Passed Me By), and citing the band’s other real chart/cultural footprint: a Gundam ending theme (Beyond the Time) and steady karaoke royalties, as evidence the “one-hit” label undersells them. There’s also a side debate about whether singles strategy (choosing KISS YOU over Be Together as the Get Wild follow-up) actively hurt their reputation.
What outsiders will likely miss: the “support member” system name-dropped almost in passing — Tak Matsumoto (B’z) and Daisuke Asakura (access) both did stints as TM NETWORK’s touring/session musicians before their own bands broke out — is a bigger deal than it sounds, since both went on to become two of the best-selling acts in Japanese music history. That pipeline, more than any single song, is arguably TM NETWORK’s real legacy.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Entertainment & Sports News+) thread “[Music] TM NETWORK Debuts on “SONGS,” Reveals the Secret Behind “Get Wild” in First Music-Show Appearance in 12 Years.”
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