e-girls Celebration! - Single Review (CD Only Edition)

Stepping right back in time today with e-girls very first single Celebration. It's amazing to believe this song was released over 10 years ago and that the group was disbanded before reaching the ten year mark. The other crazy thing is that this CD was still in print when I brought it AND you can still buy it today! There must be a warehouse somewhere in Japan just full of this particular CD.

Celebration is e-girls debut single and was released in December 2011. It was released in three editions, CD+DVD, CD Only and a mu-mo edition. e-girls is a collective group made up of members from Happiness, Flower and Dream and this single featured 21 members. I brought my copy of the CD Only edition brand new from CD Japan as at the time I was struggling to find one second hand. I primarily collect the CD Only editions of e-girls singles so I was looking for this edition for my collection. The single contained the following contents:

• CD - 7 track single
• Jewel Case
• Lyrics Booklet
• OBI
• Rhythmzone and ldhgirlsfamily flyers

The front cover has a group photo of all 21 members in some very 2000's looking J-Pop outfits. The hairstyles are definitely something, like Ami's always catches my eye and reminds me of Saleisha's makeover from cycle 9 of ANTM. The early e-girls releases are unique as there are only a few singles that the members are all photographed together. Later singles had them photoshopped in positions. The back cover is pretty boring with the track listing specifically located on the left side. This has always confused me, so much space yet there is it randomly is on the left margin.

Inside isn't too interesting with the lyrics booklet and the CD in the casing. It has a white background with the letter E patterned over it. Unfortunately it doesn't show on the photographs and this single was difficult to photographed. The lettering shows better in person and looks quite elegant. Because I brought this single brand new, it included the OBI! It contains some information regarding groups within e-Girls and brief production information.

Now the lyrics booklet for this single is quite interesting as it is reversible! One section covers the e-girls focused aspects of the single with lyrics and production credits whereas the other section is all about Dream who sings the B-Side track Dreaming Girls. This song was first used in a Samantha Thavasa CM in August 2011 before being released as a digital single for the group in December. I always felt like Dreaming Girls was meant to be a full physical single release for Dream but that never came to fruition. So it got chucked onto the e-girls single to fill space and drive up sales I guess. You can actually flip the lyrics booklet around to make the Dreaming Girls image the front cover! When I was searching for this single on Yahoo Auctions, I kept seeing listings with this as the cover. Quite confusing until I figured it out and I didn't end up buying an listings as the CDs were classified as junk/trash quality. The single did included some flyers with information about rhythmzone and ldh family.

The CD only edition of Celebration includes 7 songs which I feel is a large number for a Japanese single. The title track is Celebration! of course which is a typical pop song and 7 members of the group performed the track. The song was rerecorded two times in later years to switch out member vocals but this is the version I listen to the most. The song was used in a TV CM for LAZONA Winter Bargain. There are two B-sides, the Dream song I mentioned earlier and CAT'S EYE. This song is a well-known Japanese song from 1983 and has been covered by various artists, even  another one of my favourite J-Pop groups MAX has a version. The accompanying instrumentals are featured of course as is a special ~winter mix~ of the title track.

1. Celebration!
2. CAT'S EYE
3. Dreaming Girls / Dream
4. Celebration! (Instrumental)
5. CAT'S EYE (Instrumental)
6. Dreaming Girls (Instrumental)
7. Celebration! ~Winter Mix~

The other two versions of the Celebration! single are the CD+DVD and mu-mo CD only. The CD+DVD only contains Celebration! and Dreaming Girls with their instrumentals. The mu-mo edition has just the title track and was sold through the mu-mo store. I love mu-mo editions of any single as they always have the coolest cover designs and I especially love how the E-Girls ones had a similar design for all the singles . It was even kept when the company switched from mu-mo to One Coin versions.

Well that is the first e-girls single reviewed and only 23 more to go! I'm actually only missing 2 singles from the 24 they released in physical form which is quite a good number! All of them are CD Only editions apart from one where I have the CD+DVD one too. It will probably a big project to post reviews of all of the singles so let's make it a fun project for the blog! Sadly no MV posts for this single as they are unavailable to post on Blogger but you can easily find them on Youtube! Might just be the short versions though cause you know, it's J-Pop.