Kenshi Yonezu's "Lemon" Video Passes 1 Billion YouTube Views
The music video for Kenshi Yonezu's "Lemon" passed 1 billion YouTube views at 23:08 on November 3, 8 years and 249 days after its February 27, 2018 release.
2 sources 1h ago
Reporting from 2 sources: ASCII.jp, KAI-YOU.
Why it matters
A theme song written for a 2018 TBS drama has outrun the drama itself, and the creator's own comment, that the song left his intentions behind almost instantly, is the most honest account of what a billion views actually measures.
Key Facts
- Kenshi Yonezu's "Lemon" music video passed 1 billion YouTube views at 23:08 on November 3.
- The milestone came 8 years and 249 days after the video's February 27, 2018 release.
- It is the first music video for a song sung with Japanese lyrics to reach 1 billion views on YouTube.
- "Lemon" was the theme song for the 2018 TBS drama "Unnatural," written by Akiko Nogi and directed by Ayuko Tsukahara.
- A Tokyo Dome live performance of "Lemon" premieres on Yonezu's official YouTube channel at 20:00 on November 4.
It is the first music video for a song sung in Japanese lyrics to reach 1 billion views on YouTube. The song was the theme for the 2018 TBS drama "Unnatural," and Yonezu and the drama's team released comments.
Tomokazu Yamada directed the video. Yonezu lost his grandfather while making the song, and that experience is said to have shaped it. The record sits alongside other numbers the song has posted: it topped Billboard JAPAN's JAPAN Hot 100 for 2018 and 2019, received a 3 million download certification from the Recording Industry Association of Japan in 2019, and in April 2026 reached Oricon's "triple 5" with 500,000 cumulative CD single sales, 500,000 digital downloads, and 500 million streams.
Yonezu described the response as a campfire he meant to light turning into a wildfire, and said he has felt immense gratitude toward the song since then. Akiko Nogi, who wrote "Unnatural," said "Lemon" became everyone's "Lemon" and now the world's. A Tokyo Dome live performance of the song premieres on Yonezu's official YouTube channel at 20:00 on Wednesday, November 4.
Written with AI by Yomimono from the 2 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited. See our editorial policy.
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