YOASOBI

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About

YOASOBI is a Japanese music superduo formed in 2019, composed of Vocaloid producer Ayase, and singer-songwriter Ikura. The duo's first viral moment occurred after their appearance on the Japanese YouTube channel The First Take in May 2020 where they performed their debut single, "夜に駆ける (Yoru ni Kakeru)." Since then, the group has performed songs for the Beastars, Mobile Suit Gundam and Oshi No Ko animes, while also finding immense success globally on TikTok, accumulating millions of videos using their songs on the platform.

History

YOASOBI, which can be translated to "nightlife," was formed in October 2019 when composer Ayase received a pitch from Sony Music Entertainment^[1] to write songs based on the stories submitted to their online publishing platform, Monogatary.com.^[2] While looking for a vocalist for the project on social media, Ayase came across the singer-songwriter profile of Rira Ikuta, which now goes by the name Ikura. Their first song, "夜に駆ける (Yoru ni Kakeru)" or "Racing into the Night" in English, was released on YouTube^[3] on November 16th, 2019, amassing 266 million views and 1.7 million likes in four years (seen below).

The duo released the first album on January 6th, 2020, titled "THE BOOK" and consisting of 9 songs, which sold 72,238 copies in its first week.^[4] On May 15th, 2020, they performed "Racing into the Night" on the Japanese YouTube^[5] channel The First Take. The video quickly went viral on social media, garnering 136 million views and 1.7 million likes in three years (seen below).

The song continued to gain popularity after its performance on The First Take channel, ranking at the top of Billboard Japan Hot 100^[6] on May 27th, 2020. The duo thanked fans for the achievement on Twitter,^[7] receiving 3,000 likes and 548 retweets in three years (seen below).

Reputation

The duo is well-received by critics in Japan, winning the "Song of the Year" award for "Yoru ni Kakeru" at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards Japan (MTV VMAJ).^[8] The next year, YOASOBI won the award for "Artist of the Year" also at the MTV VMAJ.^[9]

YOASOBI has a large fandom both in and outside of Japan. Their YouTube^[10] channel has over 5 million followers, their Twitter^[11] has over 840,000 followers and their TikTok^[12] has over 1.4 million followers.

YOASOBI – Gunjou

The song "群青 (Romaji. Gunjou. Eng. Ultramarine)" was popularized when it was used in various video edits as a bait-and-switch meme on social media around October 2021.