[nmskalmn]

CALL it the battle of the 1982 girls.

By sheer coincidence, the three young singers vying for the J-pop queen throne are all born in 1982.

But their personalities and appeals are vastly different.

Kumi Koda is the voluptuous sex goddess with a brazen attitude to match.

Ami Suzuki is the comeback sweetie-pie who is still immensely likeable after a four-year break.

Ai Otsuka is the cute girl with wild musical ideas.

The three 23-year-olds do share one thing in common, though - the uncanny ability to sway consumer behaviour and give reigning queens like Ayumi Hamasaki, Hikaru Utada and Mika Nakashima a run for their yen.

So, who will be the next in line to the throne?

Of the trio, Kumi comes across as the strongest contender.

Recently voted best artiste by the Oricon chart, this sex bomb follows closely in Ayumi's royal footsteps.

Her offering of dance-pop is trendy, though not especially striking. But she knows how to grab eyeballs with her chameleon image.

Flaunting her ample cleavage on a gigantic poster hung prominently in the streets of Tokyo certainly helped her to achieve the feat of selling over 1.2 million copies of her first album of singles, Best - First Things.

Now, she is tackling a new challenge - to release a single once a week for 12 weeks, from 7 Dec.

Each CD cover bears a stunning ethnic look, ranging from Native American Indian and Chinese to Japanese, Hawaiian and Indian, and fans are supposed to collect all 12 to form a big picture.

If all the singles make it to the Top 5 on the Oricon chart, Kumi has promised to be a professional wrestler for a day.

But she may not have to, since her second single, Birthday Eve, only made it to No 6. Her first and fourth singles, however, debuted at No 1, and her third at No 5.

Meanwhile, Ai and Ami are not about to let Kumi ascend the throne without a fight.

For Ai, it is her cutesy girlish powers that appeal to the throngs of fans who snap up her albums - all of which come with collectible photo books or bonus DVDs.

While the career of Mika Nakashima (above, left, with actor Ryuhei Matsuda) is big news in J-pop land, the top showbiz story right now is whether Manabu Oshio and Akiko Yada (below right, in a TV drama) have secretly tied the knot.

Her latest album, Love Cook, beat Mika's Best to debut at No 1 on the Oricon chart two weeks ago, and sold 335,000 copies within a week.

This talented singer-songwriter is also ranked fourth on Oricon's overall CD sales chart this year, boasting total sales worth 38 billion yen ($539m).

Ami, however, has no staggering figures to show off. But she did achieve the mean feat of bouncing back with aplomb in March.

Four years of silence due to contract problems did little to dent her popularity.

She has since released five singles and an album, and completed a sell-out concert tour on Saturday.

Only time will tell if she will be able to regain the music clout she used to wield at the height of her career in 2000.

While Ami and her 1982 contemporaries are scaling their way up, reigning queens Ayumi, Mika and Hikaru are showing no signs of sliding.

Mika, 22, has been fast expanding her career out of Japan and looks set to keep up the momentum.

Besides headlining the hit manga-adapted movie, Nana, and going to Hong Kong for promotions, the mysterious diva also debuted in South Korea and performed to thousands of fans during a concert in Seoul.

At the other end is Hikaru, 22, who looks set to focus on the Japanese market after her valiant but failed attempt to break into Hollywood and Europe with an English album.

As for Ayumi, 27, she proves once again with her new No 1 album, (miss)understood, that she still reigns supreme on the Oricon chart.

All eyes are also on whether she will finally wed her long-time boyfriend, Tomoya Nagase, this year, with speculations rife in recent months.

http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/show/st...,99786,00.html