Mr.Children

Mr. Children is one of the best-selling Japanese acts of all time, with more than 75 million albums sold during the band's 30-year career. The rock band formed in Shibuya, Tokyo, in 1992. Lead vocalist and chief songwriter Kazutoshi Sakurai, guitarist Kenichi Tahara, bassist Keisuke Nakagawa, and drummer Hideya Suzuki released two albums that same year, with Everything going double-platinum and its successor, Kind of Love, earning quadruple-platinum sales. Two years later, Mr. Children earned its first Number 1 single with "Innocent World," kickstarting an unprecedentedly successful run of 30 consecutive chart-topping hits. One of those hits, "Tomorrow Never Knows," was released five months later and became one of the Top 10 best-selling songs in Japanese history. Meanwhile, Mr. Children also maintained its streak of chart-topping albums with 1994's Atomic Heart, 1996's Shinkai, 1997's Bolero, and 1999's Discovery. All of those albums went multi-platinum, and the following two decades proved to be similarly successful for the band. Every studio album that Mr. Children released between 2002's It's a Wonderful World and 2020's Soundtracks peaked at Number 1 on the Oricon Albums Chart, accompanied by a string of Number 1 singles — including 2001's "Youthful Days," 2006's "Shirushi," 2008's "Hanabi," and 2017's "Hikari no Atelie" — that maintained the band's presence on Japanese radio. Meanwhile, the band's various greatest hits compilations also topped the chartings, including 2022's Mr. Children 2015–2021 & Now.