ILLIT added another song with 100 million streams in Japan.
On the 11th, Oricon released its latest weekly streaming ranking (March 16), reporting that ILLIT (Yuna, Minju, Moka, Wonhee, Iroha)'s first original Japanese song, Almond Chocolate, surpassed 100 million cumulative streams. It is ILLIT's second song with 100 million streams, following Magnetic, which exceeded 300 million on the same chart.
Almond Chocolate was produced last February as the theme song for the film "I don't like you just by your face," and received great love from both film and music fans. The song drew praise for its wistful melodic sensibility combined with ILLIT's clear vocal tone, and it gained a distinct presence on music charts as word of mouth spread following performances on Japanese music shows.
The song's sustained popularity on streaming is encouraging. About five months after its release, it earned the Japan Record Association's streaming 'gold' certification (50 million cumulative streams) and appeared on numerous year-end charts, including Billboard Japan, Apple Music Japan and Line Music.
On the strength of these achievements, ILLIT won the excellence work award for a foreign artist with Almond Chocolate at the 67th Nippon Record Awards. This is the first time a K-pop group's first original Japanese song has won this award.
Meanwhile, ILLIT has been active in the Japanese TV animation OST field with its trademark trendy sensibility and refreshing vocal tone. After performing the season 2 opening song Sunday Morning for Princess "Torture"'s Time in January to favorable response, they were also chosen as the singers for Bubee, the opening song for the anime Magical Sisters Rurutoriri, scheduled to air next month.
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