HANABIE., a four-member band that celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2025, has recently released a new EP, HOT TOPIC. When they formed the band, the members were still in their teens, but in the intervening years, they’ve gone beyond the confines of Japan with several successful overseas tours, crossed genre lines, and spanned all kinds of borders. This new EP can be seen as an expression of their maturity into adulthood and the changes they’ve undergone. On the album, the four express how they’ve changed, the energy they give off, their indelible memories, the messages they want to convey, and so much more, with an honest and unflinching approach that shows just how strong the band truly is. Billboard JAPAN talked at length with the four members about their feelings on having celebrated their tenth anniversary and about their new EP.
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You celebrated your 10th anniversary in 2025. How do you feel when you look back on the past decade?
Yukina: When HANABIE. formed, I was still in my first year of high school, and I never dreamed we’d keep going for so long. I just kept doing what I wanted to do, racing toward my vision for the future, and the next thing I knew, ten years had passed. That’s what it feels like to me. In my last year of high school, I wrote my dream down in a notebook. I wrote “I want to be a star of the Japanese heavy rock world.” I never expected that now we’d have listeners not just in Japan but around the world.
So your current reality has surpassed even your imagination. Do you think that this is because of how single-mindedly you’ve worked to achieve your goals and vision?
Yukina: That, and another big factor is that we were always having fun while we did it. It wasn’t a grind. My band mates are also my colleagues, my friends, and my family. There are all kinds of relationships that connect us. Over the past ten years, the environments around us have changed a lot. We’ve been high school students, university students, and now members of the working public. But through it all, we’ve kept believing in our own music thanks to each other.
Matsuri: Those ten years went by in the blink of an eye, but looking back, there were a lot of turning points for us as a band. The main thing I’ve felt over this past decade is “being in a band is so fun.” (laughs) I’m sure the same is true for every job, but there are some things that you just can’t experience unless you’re in a band. I’ve experienced all kinds of wonderful things over this past ten years. And another thing is that, after ten years in the band, I know that we’re going to keep on going. My dreams have only gotten bigger and more diverse over the past decade. Like, I think about what other genres I’d like us to try our hands at, or what kinds of costumes we should wear when we’re in our 40s or our 50s.
Hettsu: Looking back at the past decade, I think we’ve been a band with a lot of ups and downs. (laughs) But it’s because of all those ups and downs that we’re where we are today. We’ve been blessed with the people we’ve worked with, too. A decade on, and my desire for us to keep playing together is stronger than ever.
Chika, you joined HANABIE. in 2023, and you took part in last year’s memorial year activities. What are your feelings about the band’s decade-long history?
Chika: Even over just this past three years of being in the band, we’ve had lots of ups and downs. (laughs) So I’m sure that over the band’s ten-year history, the other members have overcome even more. Honestly, I’m just amazed. I feel a lot of respect for the fact that they all started out as friends and they’ve kept it up ever since. I’ve watched videos on YouTube of past performances, and everyone’s gotten a lot better as musicians over the past ten years, too. (laughs)
Matsuri: I can’t even watch our old videos, they’re so embarrassing. (laughs)
So, Chika, you’re dedicated to establishing a long future with the band?
Chika: Yes, of course. And I hope I can help provide the band with even greater momentum.
Last year, you toured Europe. What was your experience like?
Matsuri: Last year we went to Europe twice, and the venues on the fall tour were much larger. I remember thinking, “wow, even overseas, there are this many people who want to see us?” I’ve always felt the love from our fans, but having toured overseas for three years now, I also get this feeling that our overseas fans are watching over us and seeing us grow. That warmth really came across during the tour. I’m glad we’ve kept playing overseas, and I think it’s important that we keep going out there to see our fans.
Yukina: When we tour overseas, we travel by bus and we perform every day. Every single day is like being on a roller coaster. (laughs) Problems will come up and it’s like “why did that even happen?!” When we tour Europe, in particular, we go to lots of different countries. They all have different languages, different vibes, even the ages of the fans are different. When we’re out there touring, I’m sure some people might think “don’t you get tired of putting on a show every day?” But, no, not at all. Every day feels fresh and new.
You’ve got no time to get bored.
Yukina: That, and when you stand up on the stage, looking out over the crowd, the experience is…moving. Until we were touring, I’d just been hell-bent on doing whatever was immediately in front of me, but in our third year of overseas touring, I realized “this time we have here, it’s kind of a miracle.” That’s why I feel so grateful. And I had that same kind of moving experience at every venue we played, so last year’s European tour was a truly memorable one for me.
You play in some places where almost nobody understands Japanese. Are there any things you focus on when it comes to communicating with fans?
Yukina: We mainly emcee our shows in English, but we also try to say some things in the local language. But when we’re actually playing, the audience all sings along in Japanese. Everyone shouts out “Osaki ni shitsurei shimasu” (“Pardon me, I have to go now”). (laughs) Sometimes, when I’m rapping, I see people’s mouths moving at the same speed as mine, and I’m like “No way!?” (laughs) Everyone sings along. It doesn’t matter if the lyrics are in Japanese or in English. That’s something I’ve learned from the fans. It’s like our hearts are connecting at the same level. I think that kind of moving experience is only possible when you’ve been in a band for a long time and you perform overseas. On our tours, every day is one moving experience after another.
You’ve recently released your newest EP, HOT TOPIC. The name of the EP also appears in the lyrics of one of the EP’s songs, “Spicy Queen,” which came out on May 28 of last year as a digital release to commemorate the band’s ten-year anniversary. What made you decide on “Spicy Queen” as the right song to celebrate the anniversary?
Matsuri: I didn’t have our tenth anniversary in mind when I was writing it. “Spicy Queen” just happened to be what I was working on when we toured the US with Kim Dracula last year. The tour with Kim was actually what inspired me, so it didn’t have anything to do with the tenth anniversary. But musically I wanted to get back to the basics, so I didn’t put in any synths or beeps and bleeps. I focused on the band’s core sound, and when Yukina heard it, she said “This would be good as a tenth anniversary release, don’t you think?” From that point on, I started putting the finishing touches on it as an anniversary release. So, in a sense, it being our tenth anniversary song was random, but also inevitable.
Yukina: When I heard the solid, heavy sound of the band boom out, I was like “this right here is perfect for the tenth anniversary.” And then right after deciding that, I made a suggestion to Matsuri: “How about making this our spicy food song?” Our first album (Girl’s Reform Manifest) had a song on it titled “We Love Sweets.” A lot of people discovered us through that song, and it’s what led to us going overseas. I didn’t exactly want to make a response song, but I’d always wanted to have a song about spicy food, too. Also, we wrote “Spicy Queen” while we were in the US, so I wanted the song to include some of our memories of the tour. When we played at Nashville, we ate some famous, incredibly hot Nashville chicken. I wanted to reference that in the song, so the song ends with a super-fast “Nashubiru no chikin umai” (“Nashville chicken’s great”). (laughs)
So there are some interesting memories woven in there. (laughs) The new EP’s jacket also has a different feel from your earlier releases. It’s an illustration of a woman, which is the same, but the women in your earlier releases had a girlish feel, while the woman on the HOT TOPIC jacket is more of an adult.
Matsuri: We wanted to express a sense of duality on the jacket. If you look at her eyes, one has a lot of highlights, and the other doesn’t. We wanted to show this positive duality of how “life may throw a lot at me, but I’m going to be happy and stay true to myself.” The title HOT TOPIC, too, reflects the fact that we want to be hot topics, and we want everyone else to be hot topics, too. After all, everyone’s the main character in their own life.
Hettsu: We wanted to express a new side of us with the jacket. I think the songs on the EP also have a bit of a different feel than previous HANABIE. songs. We wanted to make it a statement that we were starting a new chapter of HANABIE..
The theme of the first song, “ICONIC,” is being true to yourself. That matches up perfectly with the ideas behind the EP’s artwork and title.
Matsuri: I feel like the lyrics contrast with who we used to be.
Yukina: Right. For example, back when we started, the lyrics to the chorus would probably have been in Japanese.
Hettsu: Once we began touring overseas, we started to understand how different words came across. Also, the lyrics are in English, so a lot of feeling is poured into them. It’s not like we thought up lyrics in Japanese and then just translated them into English. Instead, these English lyrics came straight out of Yukina and Matsuri.
Matsuri: I think, after doing this for ten years, we wanted to break out of our shells.
Yukina: Also, I think the people who listen to our music have times in their own lives where they feel like they’ve reached their limit, that they’re all tapped out. I hope “ICONIC” is the kind of song they can shout along with us on as they’re coming down from days like that. I feel like everyone is trying their hardest to stay on their best behavior, but we want to tell them “It’s okay to cut loose.” Let yourself free. Accept yourself. We hope it’s that kind of song for listeners.
You’ll be starting a tour of North America from March, right?
Matsuri: It’s been almost exactly a year since the last time we went to the US, so I’m looking forward to it. I’m also excited for audiences to see how we’ve changed through our ten-year anniversary. And I’m looking forward to seeing how our new songs transform when we play them live.
Chika: I’m sure there are people out there who think of us as nothing more than a “girls’ band,” so I want us to put on shows where we can establish an imposing presence.
Yukina: After we finish the tour, we’re going to mainly focus on our musical activities here in Japan for a while. We don’t have any overseas headliner tour plans for a while, so we’re going to cherish each and every day of this American tour. Then, when we get back, we’ll show the world just how much we’ve grown.
—This interview by Fumiaki Amano first appeared on Billboard Japan
