King & Prince’s ‘halfmoon’ Debuts at No. 1 on Japan Hot 100

King & Prince reign over the Billboard Japan Hot 100 with “halfmoon,” blasting in at No. 1 on the chart released May 29.

The Takeshi Kobayashi-produced title track off the duo’s 15th single “halfmoon/moooove!” is being featured as the theme of the drama series Tokyo Tower starring member Ren Nagase. To celebrate the sixth anniversary of the group’s CD debut, King & Prince made this single and the tracks off its best album available for streaming and download. “halfmoon” ruled sales and downloads this week and also topped radio airplay after collecting 2,000 times more points for the metric than the previous single.

Compared to the previous release, first-week CD sales for “halfmoon” fell approximately 10% to 315,400 copies and video views dropped by half. But the points gained through downloads and radio resulted in a 168% increase in total points over the previous work and the single scored over 10,000 points for the first time since “Life goes on,” the last single by the group as a quintet. King & Prince also have six songs charting on the downloads list this week, the group’s best-of album Mr. 5 is at No. 2 on the downloads album tally, and “moooove! is currently at No. 70 for streaming.

Creepy Nuts’ “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” slips to No. 2 on the Japan Hot 100 this week and Mrs. GREEN APPLE’s “Lilac” holds at No. 3.

M!LK’s “Blue Shower” soars 88-4, blasts into the top 5 fueled by the release of the CD on May 22. XG’s new song “WOKE UP” debuts at No. 5 after hitting No. 5 for sales and No. 3 for radio.

Billboard Japan will unveil its 2024 mid-year charts on Friday, June 7 JST.

The Billboard Japan Hot 100 combines physical and digital sales, audio streams, radio airplay, video views and karaoke data.

See the full Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart, tallying the week from May 20 to 26, here. For more on Japanese music and charts, visit Billboard Japan’s English Twitter account.