Little Glee Monster

Priding themselves on their angelic, a cappella harmonies and cheery, infectious hooks, Japanese girl group Little Glee Monster leave the elaborate dance moves and the flashy, glamourous outfits to other icon acts, and have instead built their reputation on wholesome, heartfelt teenage pop singalongs. Formed through talent auditions organised by media company Watanabe Entertainment and Sony Music in 2013, the members were selected primarily on their vocal ability and were quickly impressing fans with live, unaccompanied performances on some of Japan's major music television shows. Initially made up of lead vocalist Karen, Serina, Asahi, Mayu, Manaka and Maju, they had an average age of 16 and were still at high school when they released debut single 'Houkago High Five', but soon had a healthy fan base and were selling out big arenas. Their track 'Suki da' was also used as the theme tune to TV drama 'Omotesandou Koukou Gasshoubo', and things really took off in 2016 when second album 'Colorful Monster' reached number three on the Japanese Billboard chart. Maju left the group in 2017, but their sugar sweet melodies and cheery energy produced a string of hit singles including 'Dakara, Hitori Janai', 'Ashita e' and 'Over', and their fourth album 'Juice' (2018) took them on a big headlining tour of Asia and helped them win the MTV Europe Music Award for Best Japanese Group in 2018. They also topped the Japanese charts for the first time with new album 'Flava' in 2019 and released a DVD documentary of their two-night show at the historic Nippon Budokan arena in Tokyo.