"Sweet 19 Blues" | ||||
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Single by Namie Amuro | ||||
from the album Sweet 19 Blues | ||||
B-side | "Joy" | |||
Released | August 21, 1996 | |||
Recorded | May 1996 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 5:35 | |||
Label | Avex Trax | |||
Songwriter(s) | Tetsuya Komuro | |||
Producer(s) | Tetsuya Komuro | |||
Namie Amuro singles chronology | ||||
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"Sweet 19 Blues" (stylized in all caps SWEET 19 BLUES) is the seventh single by Japanese recording artist Namie Amuro. It was composed, written and arranged by Tetsuya Komuro for her debut album of the same name. A month after its release, her label Avex Trax released the song as a recut single due to overwhelming demand. The song's subject and the album in general was about the melancholic passing of another sweet year of youth, which is a particularly Japanese obsession.
Although it did not achieve the success of her previous singles, it still managed to debut at No. 2 on the Oricon Singles Chart with over 100,000 copies sold in its first week and eventually sold about half a million units overall; a great feat for a post-album single. The single was certified platinum by the RIAJ for 400,000 copies shipped to stores.
The song later served as the ending theme song for the 1996 comedy That's Cunning! Shijō Saidai no Sakusen?, in which she also starred.[1] Thus it marked the first and only time she used a track to promote a theatrically released flick. Twelve years later, Miliyah Kato's 2008 hit song "19 Memories" sampled the song.[2] In 2014, eighteen years after its release, a re-recorded version of "Sweet 19 Blues" was made for Amuro's compilation album Ballada.[3]