Not Beyoncé’s new single or any of the tracks from Drake’s album released last week is currently the most listened to Spotify song in the United States. That’s the single Glimpse Of Us from joji. Who is this Japanese artist?
All eyes were on Beyoncé last week when she made her comeback with Break My Soul† The song is the first single from the album Renaissance, the successor of Lemonade from 2016. Although that song is not without merit on Spotify with 21 million streams in a few days and a place in the list of the most listened to songs of the moment, it has to leave Joji well ahead of her.
His single Glimpse Of Us appeared on June 10 and has been going like a rocket ever since. The piano ballad is already good for 126 million streams on Spotify. In the United States, the song currently gets over 1.6 million streams per day, which is more than any song.
In the worldwide list, Joji currently only has to Harry Styles and his mega hit As It Was to tolerate. The originally Japanese artist is also on the rise in the Netherlands. Glimpse Of Us is at the time of writing in fifteenth place in the Spotify list with just under 100,000 streams per day.
From comedy vlogger to singer
Although it is the first time that Joji has scored such a big hit in official charts (in Australia and New Zealand it is a number 1 hit and has also reached the top 10 of the US Billboard Hot 100), streaming successes on Spotify not strange to him. With his two albums Ballads 1 in Nectar he already reached hundreds of millions of streams, with the song as the highlight Slow Dancing In The Dark with over 850 million plays.
The 29-year-old artist, whose full name is George Kusunoki Miller, was born in Osaka, Japan and moved to the United States at the age of eighteen. There he starts a career as a YouTuber and comedian with the well-known account Filthy Frank. The followers and views on YouTube pour in thanks to the often gross humor in the videos, so Joji does not start his musical adventure completely without followers.
At that time, Joji was already working on music, but in a completely different way. As Pink Guy, he releases satirical hip-hop. He announces that he will stop with Filthy Frank and Pink Guy at the end of 2017, mainly due to health problems. He suffers from a neurological disorder that can cause seizures when stressed.
Relationship troubles on TikTok
Joji changes course and focuses on his musical career from 2018. Where the sound on his first two albums is mainly electronic in nature, Glimpse Of Us more acoustic. On the song he sings about how he has found the apparently perfect partner, but that in his head he is still busy with his ex.
The topic of the song gets a lot of attention on TikTok. Many young users make videos with the song in the background where they (often jokingly) question their own relationship. “It’s my worst nightmare that my boyfriend can put himself in this song”, is a frequently heard cry.
Although Joji has been criticized for the lyrics (“Why start a new relationship, if you’re obviously not ready for it?”), this doesn’t hurt him, because partly due to the trend on TikTok, Beyoncé can’t keep up with his current streaming figures for the time being. tip.
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