King & Prince’s eighth single “Koi furu tsukiyo ni kimi omofu” debuts at No. 1 on this week’s Billboard Japan Hot 100, dated Oct. 4 to 10, with 449,115 CDs sold. The track, whose title loosely translates to “Thinking of you on a romantic moonlit night,” ruled physical sales, look-ups, and Twitter mentions, while also coming in at No. 3 for video and No. 21 for radio airplay.
The five-member Johnny’s group’s previous single called “Magic Touch” launched with 470,605 first-week copies, so the latest single — featured as the theme of the movie Kaguya-sama: Love Is War The Final starring King & Prince’s Sho Hirano — dipped a bit sales-wise. However, the new single’s music video racked up 1,723,154 first-week views to come in at No. 3 for the metric, a significant improvement from the previous single’s debut at No. 30, with 670,237 views. This shows that the group’s core fanbase is steadily increasing its affinity for digital content.
TWICE released its first English-language single called “The Feels” on Oct. 1. The track charted on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 83, giving the girls their first entry on the coveted tally and launching them onto the global stage. “The Feels” is taking off in Japan as well, soaring to No. 3 this week after debuting at No. 29 on last week’s chart with only three days to count.
The seven-member dance and vocal group BE:FIRST debuts at No. 7 this week with “Kick Start.” The first digital track by the group formed from the boy band audition THE FIRST produced by rapper SKY-HI launched at No. 2 for downloads, No. 15 for streaming, No. 8 for video, No. 11 for Twitter, and No. 76 for radio, reflecting the high level of attention directed at the brand-new group.
There was a major shift in the download ranking this week, and veteran rock band B’z ruled the metric with “UNITE” (37,783 units), leading BE:FIRST’s “Kick Start” (16,764 units) by about 20,000 units. “UNITE” was released Oct. 1 following the high-profile concert/livestream by the same name that took place in September, featuring first-time collaborations between B’z and two other Japanese mega-bands, Mr.Children and GLAY. The track is currently at No. 13 for radio and No. 48 for Twitter and still has strength left to climb the Japan Hot 100.
The Billboard Japan Hot 100 combines physical and digital sales, audio streams, radio airplay, Twitter mentions, YouTube and GYAO! video views, Gracenote look-ups and karaoke data.
See the full Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart, dated Oct. 4 to 10, here.