''Hey! Hey! Hey! Music Champ'' was a Japanese music

variety show Variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical performances, sketch comedy, magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is normally introduced by a co ...

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hosted by the comedy duo

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ...

, which consists of Hitoshi Matsumoto and

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. It is a very popular show with comical hosts who like to pick on their guests. An episode usually consists of live performances (of recently released songs) from popular artists, chat segments and other fun and games. Many famous singers such as

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Hikaru Utada , who is also known by the mononym Utada, is a Japanese-American pop singer, songwriter and producer. By 2010, Utada had become one of the most influential, and best-selling, musical artists in Japan. Born in the United States to Japanese parent ...

, and

Namie Amuro Namie Amuro ( ; ja, 安室奈美恵, Amuro Namie, label=none; born September 20, 1977) is a Japanese former recording artist, producer, songwriter, dancer, model, actress and entrepreneur who was active between 1992 and 2018. A leading figure of ...

have performed almost all of their singles on this show. Japanese rock artists such as Glay,

X Japan was a Japanese rock band from Chiba, formed in 1982 by drummer and pianist Yoshiki and lead vocalist Toshi. Starting as a predominantly power/speed metal band with heavy symphonic elements, they later gravitated towards a progressive soun ...

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, and

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have also been on the show performing their hit singles as well as playing games with the hosts. All bands signed under

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have also appeared on the show as guests and have performed their latest hit songs. South Korean boybands SS501,

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and girl groups S.E.S.,

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, and Kara have also appeared on the show. On September 18, 2012, Fuji TV announced that "Hey! Hey! Hey! Music Champ" would end its run after eighteen years. The series finale aired on December 17, 2012.

Segments

Music mixture

In this quiz game segment, four or five teams of one or more individuals try to guess songs as they are played four at a time. (As each song is correctly guessed, they are eliminated from the mixture.) Each song has a descending point value, from 40 for the first song guessed to 10 for the last. The game is played in four rounds, with the final round determining the winner in one of two ways through a random draw. The "NG" variation has one of the four songs in the final rounds taking away 100 points from the individual/team who guessed it. The "Lucky" variation is exactly the reverse: one of the final round songs ''gives'' 100 points to the individual/team who guessed it.

Telephone box

In this interview segment, guests are interviewed over a telephone in an English-style phone box.

Rainichi-In

This interview segment focuses on non-Japanese artists that have a loyal following in Japan, such as

Ne-Yo Shaffer Chimere Smith (born October 18, 1979), known professionally as Ne-Yo, is an American singer, songwriter, actor, dancer, and record producer. He gained fame for his songwriting abilities when he penned Mario's 2004 hit " Let Me Love You ...

and

Hoshi no resutoran (The Star restaurant)

This segment is a combination interview/cooking show: a chef from a restaurant selected by the guest(s) as his/her/their favorite restaurant cooks for that guest and Downtown. One notable example of this is when

co-founder Yoshiki noted the

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-based restaurant ''La Rochelle'' as his favorite place. The restaurant's owner/head chef,

Hiroyuki Sakai is a Japanese chef who specializes in French cuisine. Sakai is best known as the second, final, and longest-serving Iron Chef French on the Japanese television show ''Iron Chef'', first appearing at the beginning of 1994 (after Yutaka Ishinabe ...

, came on the show to cook a special dish for Yoshiki.

Other competitions

Miscellaneous competition segments have also occurred over the show's run, many of which started rivalries between Downtown and guests. One such example is a 1999

billiards Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . There are three major subdivisions ...

competition between entertainer Masaharu Fukuyama and Hitoshi Matsumoto, which led to an ''

Iron Chef is a Japanese television cooking show produced by Fuji Television. The series, which premiered on October 10, 1993, was a stylized cook-off featuring guest chefs challenging one of the show's resident "Iron Chefs" in a timed cooking battle bu ...

'' battle between the two.

References

External links

* {{in lang, ja Fuji TV original programming Japanese music television series 1994 Japanese television series debuts 2012 Japanese television series endings