CHAGE and Aska are immediately recognisable for their melodies - the Japanese duo have been covered by Leon Lai, Andy Lau and Sally Yeh. But the days when the tall, dreamy Aska and the shorter, smiling Chage were just fodder for the Asian cover version mill are well and truly over. Now, they're Asia's biggest-selling music stars.
Together for more than 15 years, Chage and Aska made their concert debut at the Hong Kong Coliseum last year and plan to come back as part of a huge Asian tour next April.
They're releasing an album of original songs in Hong Kong next week, called Code Name One, and they can expect to do well from it: between Aska's solo work, Chage's band Multimax, and the Chage and Aska releases, they've been selling nearly 10 million discs a year in Asia since 1993.
Their videos, which get constant rotation on MTV Asia and can sometimes be spotted on TVB Pearl, are noticeably slicker than the usual home-grown fare.
They own their own company and the rights to all their music (over 200 original songs, in addition to those composed for other artists), they have written their first song in English, for the film Streetfighter, while Chage has written music for Judge Dredd.
Artists such as Boy George, Chaka Khan, Michael Hutchence and Cathy Dennis even got together last year to record a special album of Chage and Aska songs in English. A special British 'greatest hits' release topped the charts at Tower Records in 1994, and Chage and Aska have represented Asia at the World Music Awards in Monte Carlo for the past three years.
All this from two 35-year-olds who say their biggest inspirations are The Beatles, The Carpenters, and Simon and Garfunkel. Who says the simple melody is dead? And these are nice boys singing nice songs. Not only does mother love the melodies, she wouldn't object to either Chage or Aska walking in the door with her daughter, either. When asked to name each other's faults, the best they can come up with is that sometimes Chage is an absent-minded menace.