Johnny's WEST Debuts at No. 1, Dethrones Kenshi Yonezu on Billboard Japan Hot 100
J-pop boy band Johnny's WEST bows at No. 1 on the latest Billboard Japan Hot 100 dated Jan. 28 to Feb. 3 with “Homechigirisuto," putting a stop to Kenshi Yonezu's reign atop the chart.
The new single by the seven-member group sold 143,651 copies and leads physical sales, Twitter mentions and look-ups this week, while also faring well in the radio airplay metric (No. 7).
At No. 2 this week is the second song from the animated movie Love Live! Sunshine!! The School Idol Movie: Over the Rainbow called “Meiso Meiso Mobius Loop" by the third-year high school girls in the fictional girl group Aqours (pronounced “aqua"). The single sold 87,871 copies and comes in at No. 2 for physical sales and look-ups, also besting Yonezu's “Lemon" this week.
“Lemon" topples to No. 3 this week after leading the tally for five consecutive weeks and seven total frames, but continues to lead the downloads and karaoke metrics. The song cedes the top spot for video views this week to Dinosaur Jr.'s “Over Your Shoulder" (8,081,572 views), coming in at No. 2 with 6,695,075 views.
Billboard Japan attempted to figure out why Dinosaur Jr.'s song from 1994 (which bowed on the tally at No. 18) and several other non-Japanese tracks besides Queen shot up in Japan's YouTube ranking this week within the limited time before the release of this week's Japan Hot 100 tally, but unfortunately couldn't get to the bottom of the mystery. The likely answer is that some unknown user uploaded a video or videos using these songs, which were then viewed enough times for the songs to make significant inroads into the ranking.
Also, Keyakizaka46 released the music video for “Kuroi Hitsuji" during the chart week, but not on any of the platforms that the Billboard Japan Hot 100 tracks. This is why the view count for this song, which created quite a buzz on Twitter (No. 2), couldn't be included in the calculation and the song drops to No. 41 after debuting at No. 33 last week.
The Billboard Japan Hot 100 combines physical and digital sales, radio airplay, Twitter mentions, YouTube and GYAO! video views, Gracenote look-ups and audio streams from Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, AWA, Google Play Music, KKBOX, LINE MUSIC, Rakuten Music, Recochoku provided by Gfk Japan, streaming counts based on lyrics displayed on PetitLyrics, and karaoke data from Daiichikosho and XING.
Billboard Japan Hot 100 Top 10 (dated Jan. 28 to Feb. 3)
1. [-] Homechigirisuto / Johnny's WEST (143,651 copies / none / none)
2. [-] Meiso Meiso Mobius Loop / Kanan Matsuura (CV: Nanaka Suwa), Dia Kurosawa (CV: Arisa Komiya), Mari Ohara (CV: Aina Suzuki) (87,871 copies / 6,639 downloads / none)
3. [1] Lemon / Kenshi Yonezu (7,715 copies / 32,162 downloads / none)
4. [4] Marigold / Aimyon (none / 9,958 downloads / 2,552,961 streams)
5. [-] THROW YA FIST / THE RAMPAGE from EXILE TRIBE (28,722 copies / none / none)
6. [8] Flamingo / Kenshi Yonezu (1,679 copies / 12,989 downloads / none)
7. [3] Face My Fears / Hikaru Utada & Skrillex (3,436 copies / 12,611 downloads / 995,439 streams)
8. [6] U.S.A. / DA PUMP (1,150 copies / 4,316 downloads / 1,024,366 streams)
9. [7] Konya Konomama / Aimyon (none / 4,924 downloads / 1,995,222 streams)
10. [-] Tsubame / Fudanjuku (35,510 copies / none / none)
[ ]: Position last week.
( ): Physical sales / downloads / streams (Top 50 only).