King & Prince’s “Magic Touch” blasts in at No. 1 on this week’s Billboard Japan Hot 100, dated May 17 to 23, selling 470,605 CDs in its first week.
The rising Johnny’s boy band ruled this week’s tally by coming in at No. 1 for physical sales and look-ups, which counts the number of times a CD is ripped to a computer. The group’s seventh single also came in at No. 2 for Twitter mentions, No. 20 for radio airplay, and No. 30 for video views, leading by a huge margin among this week’s top 3 debuts.
The five-member group’s previous single, “I Promise,” sold 578,092 copies in its first week, about 110,000 more than the current one, but the difference can be attributed to the COVID-19 state of emergency shutdowns of brick-and-mortar record stores.
BTS’ new summer anthem “Butter” debuts at No. 2 on the Japan Hot 100, leading downloads, streaming, Twitter and video. The South Korean septet performed the new all-English track for the first time at the Billboard Music Awards on May 23, where they won in all four categories they were finalists in: top selling song (“Dynamite”), top social artist, top song sales artist, and top duo/group.
Notably, the track racked up 14,021,650 streams after only three days during this chart week, which is about 6 million more than the song at No. 2 for the metric, Yuuri’s “Dryflower” (8,282,357 streams). The “Butter” video also garnered 7,314,289 views, about 5 million more than the track at No. 2, Ado’s “Odo” (2,547,624 views). Japan’s A.R.M.Y. have certainly come through again for the global superstars.
Japanese pop-rock band BUMP OF CHICKEN’s new single “Nanairo” bows at No. 3, collecting points in a balanced way: No. 2 for downloads and radio, No. 24 for video, No. 25 for Twitter, and No. 48 for streaming. The track is the theme of the new NHK morning drama series that will run for six months, and this high-profile tie-in has definitely boosted the performance of the single on the charts — the veteran band’s previous single “Flare” debuted at No. 23 on the Japan Hot 100 after coming in at No. 2 for downloads, No. 16 for radio, No. 34 for video, No. 77 for Twitter, and outside the top 100 for streaming.
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.
For the full Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart, dated May 17 to 23, see here.
