By: Maggie Stankiewicz
Q) Having formed in 2001, talk about how it feels to still be releasing hit singles more than twenty years later?
Yojiro: Honestly, when we debuted, I never imagined that twenty years later we’d still be making music this intensely – recording and creating. A band lasting twenty years is like winning the lottery – miraculous odds. I even wrote in our song “Hitsu Zetsu” that peers from our generation have quit the band, moved on to other jobs and started families. That’s its own happiness. But since we get to continue, I want to live the band’s dream and fantasy.
Q) How has your sound evolved over the years?
Yojiro: RADWIMPS has always absorbed many genres and formats as nutrients – like beat-driven music, track based music, etc. For the past two years I’ve been exploring and experimenting with all kinds of music. But unexpectedly, right around this 20-year mark, I found myself rediscovering the sheer coolness of being in a band. I got to make an album while savoring that same chemical reaction, that same excitement and invincibility I felt when we first started the band. It was incredibly fulfilling.
Q) Describe your songwriting journey. What’s changed about your process between your latest single and album release, and your last album?
Yojiro: During COVID we got used to writing songs and exchanging files. It’s doable, but now I wanted everyone’s bass, guitars, everything right in front of me – meeting eyes and spending hours in the studio saying, “Not quite, try this” – for this album.
Q) Your latest single, “World End Girl Friend,” serves upbeat vibes and mellow romance. What was the inspiration behind this hit?
Yojiro: While making the song “Tamamono,” I felt like I was rediscovering music from scratch. I studied and explored for about half a year – chord progressions I’d never used, ways to deconstruct harmony – and my vocabulary widened. The chorus progressions had hit a ceiling for me, but I realized there was so much more space.
That moved me and I wanted to express it straightforwardly in a song – condense these “new to me” chords. So, for “World End Girl Friend,” I didn’t over-tinker with rhythm or arrangement—kept it honest. Once the chord progression and melody came, I wanted to write a deeply romantic love song. The melody pulled the lyrics out naturally.
Q) You’ve been making music together for decades. How does your new album Anew represent the creative journey you’ve shared?
Yusuke: As the title suggests – a “new start” was definitely a core feeling of the album. At the same time, in this 20-year span, with this new album, we wanted to plant a proper monument to what kind of band sound we can make now. I think we succeeded in that.
Q) What are some of your favorite tracks off Anew – ones that you feel attached to?
Yusuke: It’s so hard.
Yojiro: We’re putting together a setlist for our upcoming arena tour, but because we made an album that we’d like to play all the songs live, we are having a hard time picking songs. It’s a great problem to have, though.
Q) Who are some artists you’d love to collaborate with in the future?
Yojiro: No particular names, but when we look for collaborators it comes down to how cool they are. We don’t choose according to their genre. It’s actually quite the opposite. We go for artists who we can’t really picture what the collab is going to be like. For me, that’s more exciting. The fundamental premise is that they possess something I lack and we make offers based on how the collab could grow into something much much bigger, not like addition but multiplication.
Q) What would you like to say to fans and supporters of your music?
Yusuke: We’re truly happy to have run twenty years since debut. We feel we’ve made a really good album to commemorate it and we’re really pleased with it. Please enjoy it purely. Give it a listen.