Japanese hitmaker Gen Hoshino teamed up with British DJ and music producer Mark Ronson for a double-headlining concert at Chiba’s Makuhari Messe on Monday night (Dec. 17).
The Grammy Award-winning Ronson kicked off the one-night-only show with a special DJ set that kept the crowd of 20,000 dancing from start to finish. Addressing the floor in Japanese from time to time, he kept the party going with a string of hits, including his latest single, “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart” featuring Miley Cyrus, and his smash hit “Uptown Funk” featuring Bruno Mars, which continues to chart on the Billboard Japan Hot Overseas 2018 year-end tally four years after its release.
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Hoshino followed with his own special set featuring popular songs old and new, opening his segment with a marimba cover of Martin Denny‘s “Firecracker” — like he did during his Continues Tour from last year — then performing “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?,” the theme song of a 2013 Sion Sono movie he starred in.
During the 10-song main set, the multi-talented J-pop artist treated the audience to his first-ever live performance of “Hada” from his upcoming new album, POP VIRUS, dropping Wednesday (Dec. 19), while tossing out some of his biggest hits, including “SUN,” “Koi” (Billboard Japan’s Song of the Year from 2017), and his latest single, “Idea.”
Throughout his set, the 37-year-old musician expressed gratitude for being able to share the stage with Ronson, and told the crowd he was having a great time performing live for the first time in a while. He closed the main set with “Friend Ship” from 2015, then returned to perform “Week End” for the encore, finishing off the special collaborative evening.
Gen Hoshino has a domestic dome tour scheduled for next year, but because he focused on recording his new album this year, this was his first and only live show in 2018.