SEKAI NO OWARI -- Habit

 

I have to admit that I don't know a whole lot about the long-running band SEKAI NO OWARI although up to now, there have been three songs put up about them on the blog. They have appeared on the Kohaku Utagassen before, and from their tunes such as "Sazanka"（サザンカ）, my impression was that they have been a fairly down-to-earth folksy pop group.

But then they showed up for their most recent appearance on NHK's annual New Year's Eve special, and Fukase and company gave a song-and-dance performance that had me thinking more along the lines of a Johnny's Entertainment clan! The intro before SEKAI NO OWARI performed the comically urgent "Habit" was that the choreography on its music video was one of the big pop culture meme moments for 2022 with folks trying their hand at it.

As SEKAI NO OWARI's 18th single (including both indies and major) released in April or June 2022, "Habit" has got a rapid-fire delivery telling folks not to categorize themselves and fall into supposed habits or traditions. Basically the message is you just go ahead and do your thing while I go ahead and do my different thing and that's OK and that's our own beeswax. The video antics in that school struck me as the band doing the "Glee" or "Fame" thing while filtering itself through a Weird Al Yankovic sieve.

Lyrics were by Fukase with fellow member Nakajin handling the music. "Habit" was also used as the theme song for the live-action version of the original manga "XXXHOLiC". The song went Gold on the download charts while hitting No. 4 as a CD on Oricon and No. 1 on streaming. It won the Grand Prize at the Japan Record Awards.

As one example of how popular the habit-forming dance was (yep, I was being cute just now), here is one video by *nakisuna.