Billboard Japan unveiled its 2026 mid-year charts, tallying the period from Nov. 24, 2025, to May 24, 2026.

On the all-genre song chart Japan Hot 100, Kenshi Yonezu’s “IRIS OUT” claims the No. 1 spot. Written as the theme song for Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, the track hit 100 million streams in four weeks, the fastest any song has reached that milestone in Billboard Japan history. It also peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Global 200 dated October 4, 2025, the highest position ever achieved by a Japanese-language song on that chart. The long-running hit has become a hit both domestically and internationally, riding on the strength of the anime’s popularity. Yonezu swept a total of 11 mid-year chart titles including this one.

“I’m proud that ‘IRIS OUT’ has become a song so many people have taken to heart,” says Yonezu. “Listening back to it now, I can’t help but laugh at what an outrageously unhinged song it is, but having put something like this out into the world at this particular moment in time, and being able to keep making music from here, is the greatest happiness I could ask for as a pop musician. I want to express my gratitude once again to Chainsaw Man, a truly extraordinary work. Thank you.”

Coming in at No. 2 is M!LK’s “Sukisugite Metsu!” The track’s catchy hook, a surge in media appearances including the 76th NHK Kohaku Uta Gassen, and viral traction on social media fueled it to 23 consecutive weeks in the top 10 during the tracking period. Mrs. GREEN APPLE’s “lulu.,” the opener for the anime series Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Season 2, follows at No. 3, and the list continues with King Gnu’s “AIZO” at No. 4 and HANA’s “Blue Jeans” at No. 5. The top tier brings together a diverse range of acts — solo artist, idol group, band, and dance-and-vocal unit.

On the Japan Hot Albums roundup, BTS’s fifth album ARIRANG, the group’s comeback after roughly three years and nine months, takes the top spot. The set topped both physical sales and streaming, and held the No. 1 spot eight times across the tracking period.

“We are deeply honored and overjoyed that the album we released after three years and nine months has been loved by so many,” BTS comments. “Like Arirang, that gives the album its name, our hope is that this music will resonate with people across eras and borders, and be remembered for a long time to come.”

HANA’s first album HANA lands at No. 2, followed by King & Prince’s STARRING, a concept album built around a cinema theme, at No. 3. Number_i’s second full-length project No.II comes in at No. 4, and the RADWIMPS tribute album Dear Jubilee -RADWIMPS TRIBUTE- rounds out the top five.

On the Japan Artist 100 list, compiled from the results of the Japan Hot 100 and Hot Albums charts, Mrs. GREEN APPLE continues to dominate. The three-man band tops the Japan Artist 100 mid-year roundup for three consecutive years, an unprecedented achievement in the list’s history.

“Winning three years in a row is an incredible honor,” says Mrs. GREEN APPLE frontman Motoki Ohmori. “We’re actually right in the middle of working on an album slated for release later this year, so this gives us motivation, or energy, to make that record as good as it can be. Thank you so much.”

HANA follows at No. 2, just over a year after the seven-member group’s major-label debut, while back number comes in at No. 3 after placing a total of 14 songs on the mid-year Japan Hot 100. Kenshi Yonezu, whose “IRIS OUT” continues its long run on the chart, lands at No. 4, and M!LK, coming off a blistering run that stretches from last year into 2026, places No. 5.

On the Global Japan Songs Excl. Japan chart (tallying the period from Nov. 21, 2025 to May 21, 2026), which tracks songs from Japan charting around the world, Kenshi Yonezu’s “IRIS OUT” again takes the top spot, and also reaches No. 1 in six different countries/regions on the Japan Songs lists.

Billboard Japan Hot 100 Mid-Year Chart 2026

1. “IRIS OUT” / Kenshi Yonezu

2. “Sukisugite Metsu!” / M!LK

3. “lulu.” / Mrs. GREEN APPLE

4. “AIZO” / King Gnu

5. “Blue Jeans” / HANA

6. “Bakuretsu Aishiteru” / M!LK

7. “ROSE” / HANA

8. “On The Way” / AiNA THE END

9. “JANE DOE” / Kenshi Yonezu, Hikaru Utada

10. “CHARISMAX” / Snow Man

Billboard Japan Hot Albums Mid-Year Chart 2026

1. ARIRANG / BTS

2. HANA / MHANA

3. STARRING / King & Prince

4. No.II / Number_i

5. Dear Jubilee -RADWIMPS TRIBUTE- / Various Artists

6. Cosmic Princess Kaguya! / Various Artists

7. THE CORE / XG

8. ANTENNA / Mrs. GREEN APPLE

9. BE:ST / BE:FIRST

10. Prema / Fujii Kaze

Billboard Japan Artist 100 Mid-Year Chart 2026

1. Mrs. GREEN APPLE

2. HANA

3. back number

4. Kenshi Yonezu

5. M!LK

6. BTS

7. CHANMINA

8. Official HIGE DANdism

9. Vaundy

10. Snow Man

Billboard Japan Global Japan Songs Excl. Japan Mid-Year Chart 2026

1. “IRIS OUT” / Kenshi Yonezu

2. “TOKYO DRIFT(FAST & FURIOUS)” / TERIYAKI BOYZ

3. “AIZO” / King Gnu

4. “JANE DOE” / Kenshi Yonezu, Hikaru Utada

5. “KICK BACK” / Kenshi Yonezu

6. “Mayonaka no Door / Stay With Me” / Miki Matsubara

7. “HYPNOTIZE” / XG

8. “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” / Creepy Nuts

9. “On The Way” / AiNA THE END

10. “Otonoke” / Creepy Nuts

Many people dream of taking extended time off from their job. Griz actually did it.

Almost exactly three years ago today, on June 6, 2023, the beloved bass-funk producer announced he was talking a break, writing on social media that “Life is really good, and I often make myself too busy to see where I am or how far this project has come. I’m following my gut instincts so for now, I’m not going to put a hard time limit length on the break.” He said he wasn’t sure when he’d be back.

And with that, he went about playing a lot of video games and Dungeons & Dragons. He made music without deadlines and quit smoking. He went to therapy, got a place in his native Michigan to be closer to his brother and spent more time with his family and friends. He was feeling good about his health, life and art and making plans to return with his own music festival, and then his dad died.

He hadn’t talked to his father in 16 years and says hearing of his death was like “having the roof of your house f—ing blown off.” His grandfather died not long after, a point by which the wheels for his return were already fully in motion. It was, to oversimplify, a lot to handle, but he figured it out, returning with his sold-out Seven Stars music festival in October.

Talking to Billboard over Zoom from his base in Denver on a recent sunny Thursday, the artist born Grant Kwiecinski seems happy and looks fresh, laughing a lot and speaking freely and philosophically while intermittently petting his dog, Frankie. This is his first interview in more than three years and may be his last for awhile. The occasion is Future Funk Volume 1, the first new Griz album since 2021 that’s out Friday (June 5).

While Griz released an EP and dozens of singles over the last year, Future Funk Volume 1 feels like another phase of his return, functioning as a sort of thesis statement for his sound in total. That is to say it’s funky, crunchy, joyful, ebullient and also hard, a duality that reflects his Gemini star sign, he says.

Fans will have many opportunities to hear it this summer, with Griz on the lineup for events including Bonnaroo, Electric Forest, Outside Lands, North Coast, Experts Only and the return of Seven Stars this October. Here, Griz talks about leaving, coming back, losing his dad in the meantime and why now, his career is just a vehicle to experience life itself.

Let’s start with the hiatus. I re-watched your announcement of it, and it sounded like you were coming from a place of like, “I’ve learned boundaries, and I want to hang out with my friends and family and put all the things I’ve been learning into action.” How did that go for you?

Sometimes the stress gets too big, and for me it got too big. I was like, “I feel like I’m ill-equipped.” I was either going to get checked into a stress rehab or get canceled for popping off about something, because I didn’t understand how to handle artist pressure and say no to taking too much work and traveling and doing shows and playing music for everybody, and then say yes to the small things like making sure I’m attending a friend’s birthday party or a family thing.

Was that difficult?

I don’t want to be the guy where it’s always like, “Well, he’s just busy.” I was losing relationships with my family members, my friends, and that sucked. It’s hard to disambiguate the identity of like, “I am artist, I am self, I am vocation.” For me it’s so important to live life outside of work. I get too wrapped up in the work, everything becomes so personal, because my entire identity is wrapped up in this thing. If something doesn’t go well, all of a sudden I think I’m not a good person, and I don’t have an identity outside the things I do professionally, because I’m constantly just in it.

Was it always clear to you that you’d come back from the hiatus?

Oh yeah, definitely.

Was there something you’d worked out ahead of time, where you knew “When this happens, I will come back”? Did you need to get to a certain place?

It was a feeling. I knew it couldn’t be a four- or five-year thing. The situation didn’t feel that dire, but there were a few things I wanted to accomplish. One was that I needed to set myself up with a place in Michigan so I could be closer to my brother. That was big, and I was able to do that. The other thing is I needed to quit nicotine. That was hard. [Laughs] It’s f—ing hard! I wanted to get my health and mental health under control and have better support systems, so I hired a therapist. I also wanted a bunch of time to just write music.

Was it always clear that there would be a place for you in the scene when you came back? Is that something you worried about?

Of course. I mean, it’s natural to worry about that, but I’ve seen Odesza do it. I was like, “There’s a way forward here.” Skrillex and Pretty Lights had both done it successfully.

Then, it’s a lot of faith. I was making all this music and I kept feeding it out to my friends who were playing, and invariably they were like, “Can we play this out?” It was like, “F— it, sure.” So there was like, the smallest bit of [Griz] spirit in the scene that existed during that time. That enabled me to have a lot of fun writing music. Not that I don’t have fun writing music, but I’ve never written music and put it out that way, where you’re kind of behind the scenes. It was cool to see like people interacting with it. But yeah, I was worried. [Laughs]

Once you took a step back and some pressure was dissolved, did your brain and creativity start working in different ways? Did the art change?

Totally, because I was creating from a space of “Who knows when this is going to be released?” I had so much time to sit there with these sounds and make a bunch of whatever that didn’t need to be played anytime soon. I miss it. It was so nice.

Was there a typical day for you during this time? Was it all making music? Like, what were you doing?

[Laughs] I’m a huge nerd, and there was a video game I really wanted to play, so for like, all of October [2023], I kind of just sat and smoked cigarettes and played Baldur’s Gate III. [Later] I went to Puerto Vallarta for my friend’s birthday, and we all got super sick, and that’s when I quit smoking.

I was also really invested in Dungeon & Dragons. I convinced my friends to start playing D&D with me, and I was the Dungeon Master, so we had this really wonderful year of playing lots of games. I would make set pieces and battle scenes and miniatures. It’s like, my favorite thing. I loved to do it. There’s a Dungeon & Dragons podcast called Critical Role, and the host Matt Mercer, is, to me, the most famous celebrity on the planet. Like, if I got to meet this guy, I’d lose my f—ing mind. So I flew solo to Los Angeles to watch him play D&D in person, which is like, the nerdiest thing I’ve ever done.

Mercer was featured on your June 2025 Side Quest EP, and you’ve also released a lot of other music over the last year and launched your Seven Stars Festival in Virginia last October. When did your break actually end?

Too early. [Laughs]

Say more.

There was this point where I really felt like I had my sh– together. I felt confident in the way forward and the plan we were formulating. Part of the plan was coming back and announcing the music festival we’ve been working on for years. We finally had Seven Stars, the concept, down. A music festival isn’t something like, “Cool, we’re doing it in a month!”

I think that was the trigger, where we were like, “We need to schedule this for a year out.” I think that was October 2024, where I was like, “By the time next October rolls around, I’m ready to get going.” I wanted to make sure I gave myself enough time to do that. We were releasing music, and I was like, “I feel like my fitness is on track. I have a good relationship with my therapist. I have a wonderful relationship with my friends and family.” Then we were on family vacation on this lake and I found out my dad died. I was like, “Yo. Uh-oh.”

I’m really sorry about that.

We were going back into it [work-wise], and I didn’t know how to communicate [that news] with people. It was a huge mess in my own personal world with him, because I hadn’t talked to him in 16 years. It had been such a long time.

I was kind of a sh–head when I was younger. [When I was 19 or 20] I went to jail for a month, for drinking underage. In Michigan, you get this thing called a “minor in possession of alcohol,” and I got three. At the second one the judge was like, “If you get another one of these, I’m going to send you to jail to teach you a lesson.” I was like, “F— you. Yeah right.”

What happened?

I got another one. I remember sitting in the courtroom, and they were like, “You’re sentenced to jail, like, right now.” I was like, “OK, so that means I go home for a little bit?” They were like, “No, in your suit you now go into a holding cell, and we’re going to cut the shoelaces out of your shoes, collect any money in your pocket and put it towards commissary, and you are now in jail for the next month.”

Holy sh–.

It’s real. It’s scary. I basically took that semester off. I wasn’t doing great in school anyways, partying a lot. It was a pretty eye-opening experience. Jail is very scary, because you can’t leave. It probably sounds so obvious, but you’re trapped. You can’t call your parents and say, “Hey, pick me up.” Especially being so young, it’s such a weird concept, because before that your parents are the ultimate authority figure.

And then you realize there are things they cannot save you from.

Yeah, and to be truly independent and live in the mess you make for yourself, it hits incredibly hard. … The TL;DR is that I got out, and that next November I went down to visit my dad for Thanksgiving. He takes me to a bar, gets me drunk, and is like, “OK cool, you’re driving us home.” I’m like, “Dude, you just got your underage kid drunk in a bar, and you’re asking him to drive home. I just got out of jail. Like, you’re a f—ing a–hole. This feels really dangerous.”

We didn’t have a great relationship before that, but I was like, “This just feels like I’m putting myself in a dangerous situation.” I see where he was coming from and that he was a good guy, but that was the nail in the coffin. I was like, “I can’t have this relationship with this guy anymore. It’s not healthy.” I felt like I got myself to a better place with it. He’s an alcoholic, and there was an interventionist. Dealing with a parent with active addiction is really tough, because you are teetering between “I want them to be the person that I want them to be for me, but I also can’t make that decision for them.”

I wonder too, when you become successful and have resources, if you felt like you could help because you had money.

Right, like “I can save them.” You can’t. It’s taken a lot of therapy to understand that. I couldn’t have made that decision for him, I can only try to show that I have this feeling of care and love and that the love is not conditional, but my participation in their world is conditional … because I can’t have a conversation with my parent at 10 o’clock in the morning and have them be wasted and get into an argument every single time we talk on the phone. That’s not OK for me to do to myself. As much as you love somebody, it really is difficult to come to that conclusion, and it’s also really conflicting.

Was that complicated by being a public figure?

I need to have enough energy to be able to give back to people and give them the experience they more than deserve, because look at how well they treat me and show up so enthusiastically and support me and listen to Griz music. It’s like, “I can’t save him, so how do I keep peace for myself so that I can exist as an artist who is like, the show love/spread love guy?” How do I exist as that person when all this drama is happening?” It’s like, f—.

That is tricky.

It takes time to figure out the right support system to foster show love/spread love, to foster thoughtful creative output, to foster energy for the show, for the music, positive energy for other people. If you don’t have the home life stuff in balance and your heart settled, the other thing cannot exist, or it manifests in dark ways. Oftentimes it’s escapism, alcoholism, drugs, negative things to get by, and that is a scary path I saw for myself. I don’t want to end up like that, so it was like, “This thing needs to stop and I need to look in the mirror and figure out: When the lights are off, who am I to myself, regardless of what anybody else thinks of me? They could love me or hate me, I just needed to figure out who I am to me.

Do you know that now?

Yeah.

What do you think you’re bringing to the scene? Like, what’s your unique flavor?

I grew up listening to a bunch of different things in high school. It was like, A Tribe Called Quest and Squarepusher, IDM, glitch-hop, hip-hop. When I was younger I thought Jurassic 5 and Tribe Called Quest were playing guitar. I didn’t understand what a sample was yet. Then I was like, “Oh, it’s f—ing sampled,” and from all this really sick music my parents loved like Earth, Wind & Fire and The O’Jays, Curtis Mayfield. That music’s also super sick, obviously.

My taste was always like, “I like Pretty Lights, and I like Skrillex,” but for me Skrillex was lacking this hip-hop quality and Pretty Lights was lacking this boisterous edge. The world I live in is the middle Venn diagram of these sounds. I wanted to make the dubstep sh– groovier and more hip-hop and swaggy, and I wanted to make the soul sample funk sh– harder, more exuberant, more energetic.

The first song I put on SoundCloud forever ago had the description like “It’s called ADHD bass music,” because it was glitch-hop rooted into bass music culture, and it was futuristic funk — future funk. For a long time that was my contribution: bass-ier, funk-sounding sh–. A long time went by, and what prompted this album was feeling like I hadn’t made an album where I was like, “This is what I think this genre is, all in one place.” Almost every album I’ve put out has had a chameleon-like tapestry of sounds, which is great. With this, I wanted to nail like, “This is what future funk is.” … This is volume 1 of hopefully many.

It must feel great to come back not only with all of the other clarity you talked about in terms of health and relationships, but with your sound. You’re really clear on what you’re offering musically.

I feel energized. I feel inspired and driven. I feel like my life is filled with purpose, because I have a solid foundation of knowing who I am. I finally came to terms with understanding how to be vulnerable and share the story of my father’s passing and what it feels like to have the roof of your house f—ing blown off. The paradigm of life completely changes, and it’s OK. It’s a beautiful part of the thing. Grief doesn’t necessarily always have to be this scary thing. It’s this passenger. It’s the wholeness of spirituality. …

Being able to hold that while also letting myself hold joy and excitement for the future and the adoration of people and be like “I am that f—ing guy! Hell yeah!” It’s like, I am that person and thank you so much and we’re going to do awesome things together and build this beautiful community, because y’all deserve it, for me to give you my absolute best.

It sounds like you’re in it for the long haul.

I would like to do this for as long as my spirit is in it. Like, Seven Stars was done because that’s what I want to do with my life, not because I want to play a big show. I want to build a community, and I want to experience life through this career and this music.

The U.K.’s music technology sector has called for greater recognition following the publication of a brand-new report at SXSW London 2026.

On Monday (June 1), the trade association MTUK (Music Technology UK) released its Sound Investment report and hosted a number of panels and keynotes at the London conference, which runs from June 1-6.

Matt Cartmell, MTUK’s CEO, spoke to Billboard U.K. on the pressures the industry is facing and the current trend that’s seeing music technology companies struggling to fulfill their potential.

The Sound Investment report found that while music tech startups are able to attract investment in their seed phases, investments do not always follow through to the growth stage, which causes the U.K. to lag behind other markets. According to the report, investment in growth-stage companies has fallen by 90% — from £101 million ($138 million) in 2020 to £10 million ($13.7 million) in 2025.

“The U.K. has a strong pipeline of music innovation, but scaling globally requires more than capital. It needs earlier access to the right commercial guidance and networks to help level the playing field and translate innovation into growth,” says Patrick Molyneux, head of the venture fundraising advisory at financial giant KPMG.

MTUK defines a company as one that “makes its primary revenue from the development, production, and exploitation of technology, rather than from exploiting the commercial assets of the music industry (musical compositions, master recordings, live musical performances, or artist brands) or from analog product manufacturing (vinyl, guitars).”

The report says that in 2020, the level of investment in U.K. music tech companies matched up to 76% of funding compared to the U.S. But in 2025, that number dropped dramatically — to just 21%. Through 2023, the formation of U.K. music tech companies remained stable, with 66 new companies. But in 2025, that had fallen to just 28 new companies. 

The Sound Investments report also exposes the U.K.’s concentration of music tech companies in London and the southeast of the country, with the region encompassing 64% of those companies. Meanwhile, companies based in Wales, the North East and Northern Ireland have registered little to no investment since 2020.

“There’s a problem with recognition of this as being an actual sector,” Cartmell tells Billboard U.K. “First of all, we’ve got to get really back to brass tacks right and recognize the fact that this is a sector that deserves funding. The way we look at it is that music tech is the infrastructure layer for the music industry and the global music economy.”

Cartmell explains that a clearer narrative would help music tech companies become more attractive to investors and provide a greater understanding of their role and importance in the music creation process. The Labour government’s Creative Industries Sector Plan in 2025 saw a number of provisions aimed at the music industry, particularly around support for grassroots music venues and supporting greater measures to protect fans from ticket touts — but the music tech sector was absent from the report, which Cartmell attributes to a lack of understanding of the role these companies play.

“There needs to be more recognition of the value that music tech brings,” Cartmell continues. “It’s not a beneficiary of the music industry; it’s actively responsible as a part of its success.”

Cartmell points to the unified approaches for the U.K.’s film, TV and video game industries, which have benefited from tax relief and investment programs to encourage growth. “A number of years ago, those industries were properly recognized as distinct sectors,” he says. “Once that happens, you can start to align specific investment vehicles, create tax incentives for investment and support the sector because you recognize the value of them to the U.K. economy.”

Furthermore, the political instability in the U.K. and the government’s muddled response to AI legislation has created uncertainty for investors. In March, the government abandoned plans for its “opt-out” model for rightsholders, with Lisa Nandy, secretary of state for culture, media and sport in the U.K., admitting at the time that the government’s “opt-out” approach had gotten it wrong. Paul McCartney, Elton John and a number of industry leaders had been among the names to protest this model and call for greater creator protections.

“[The government] needs to make some kind of decision [on A.I.],” Cartmell says. “Things will start becoming a bit more fluid as a result. There’s not enough fluidity in the sector at the moment, there’s not enough money moving around, and I think the government’s lack of response to A.I. is a big element to this.”

Cartmell says that the U.K’s music tech sector remains a world leader, particularly around “data collection and royalty infrastructure” as well as the “financial services sector.” He points to Yoto, an award-winning screen-free audio player for children, as an example of the sector’s resilience and ingenuity; the U.K. startup received $22 million in funding in 2024, with McCartney and Mark Zuckerberg among the investors. Audio equipment engineer Focusrite, formed in High Wycombe in 1981, is another example of a British company that continues to lead the way in its field.

The MTUK’s multiday showcase and conference at SXSW London welcomed representatives from the government, including Ian Murray from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and allowed new perspectives and ideas from within the U.K. as well as from attendees who had traveled from Europe and Asia. “We want to get fresh perspectives and get something done,” Cartmell says.