KOBUKURO

Bringing together the two family names of its members, Kentarō Kobuchi (born on March 13, 1977) and Shunsuke Kuroda (born on March 18, 1977), Kobukuro formed in Osaka, Japan in 1998 and embraced a folk-rock-adjacent sound that earned them commercial and critical success. The duo started out with a trio of indie albums – Saturday 8:PM (1999), ANSWER (2000), and Root of My Mind (2001) – before flying onto the radar of Warner Music Japan in 2001 and making their major-label debut with the single, "Yell," which reached number 4 on Japan's Oricon Charts. They were crowned New Artist of the Year at the Japan Gold Disc Award ceremony the following year. In 2005, Kobukuro scored their first Oricon chart-topper for Nameless World, maintaining their success in 2006 with the greatest hits album All Singles Best, which soared to the top of the Oricon weekly charts and stuck around for four consecutive weeks. They were onto a winning streak, sailing to the top of the Oricon singles chart with their "Tsubomi" single in 2007, which was featured in the drama Tokyo Tower and for which they also won the Grand Prix award at the 49th Japan Record Awards that year. The track was included on Kobukuro's seventh album, 5296, which also went to Number 1 in Japan. Over the next two decades, the pair continued to amass a repertoire of albums and singles that included "Sotsugyō (卒業)" in 2020 and 2021 album Star Made, their tenth album to date. They returned in September 2024 with anniversary album Quarter Century, preceded by the singles "Amatsubu To Hanabi" (雨粒と花火)  and "Envelope" (エンベロープ) which climbed to number 3.