Cute, stylized as -ute (kiyuto, Kyuto), was a Japanese idol girl group part of Hello! Project collective produced by Tsunku, who also writes almost all the group's songs. Cute consisted of Maimi Yajima, Saki Nakajima, Airi Suzuki, Chisato Okai, and Mai Hagiwara, who were all members of Hello! Project Kids prior to the group's formation.

On February 21, 2007, Cute's first official single "Sakura Chirari" was released. On the first day it ranked 3rd in the Oricon Daily Singles Chart. With their debut single, they became the youngest group (with the average age of 13) to rank in the top 10. On December 30, 2007, Cute received the Japan Record Award for Best New Artist. The girls were too young to appear on stage at the awards ceremony, broadcast live late at night, so Tsunku accepted the award for them. The year ended with the group's debut at the 58th NHK Kohaku Uta Gassen, an annual music show broadcast on December 31. They performed a number together with Morning Musume and Berryz Kobo. At the end of 2008, Cute was nominated for the main Japan Record Award, the Grand Prix, for the song "Edo no Temari Uta II", which was chosen as one of the best works of the year. Losing to the boyband Exile, that year they had to be content with a Gold Award, which is given to all main prize nominees. The prizewinning song was originally written for veteran enka singer Hiroshi Itsuki, who was planning to release it on his end-of-2008 album. Tsunku, however, heard the song, and said, "I want the girls to sing it as a modern fairytale." So Itsuki let him use the song. For Cute, it was rearranged from enka into boogie and the lyrics were slightly modified. In what was called a collaboration by Tsunku and a rivalry between two performers by Sankei Sports, they both released the song as CD singles, Cute on July 30 and Itsuki as his 132nd single later in the year.

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