Latest Release
- SEP 11, 2024
- 2 Songs
- Love Story · 2013
- to new lovers - Single · 2024
- Happy End - EP · 2016
- Super Star · 2011
- Suiheisen - Single · 2021
- Heroine - EP · 2015
- I Love You - Single · 2022
- Watagashi - EP · 2012
- Ato No Matsuri · 2010
- Magic · 2019
Essential Albums
- An album titled Love Story practically doubles as a mission statement from rockers back number. Since coming together in the early 2000s, the trio of guitarist Iyori Shimizu, bassist Kazuya Kojima, and drummer Hisashi Kurihara concerned itself with matters of the heart. The group explored joy and hurt in equal measures, through slow-building ballads matched with string sections for extra emotional punch and speedier cuts heavy on electric guitar. Love Story encapsulates both its soaring sonic qualities and lyrical prowess for capturing romance past, present, and future. The LP finds back number focusing on every side of the titular emotion. Shimizu’s lyrics read more melancholy and nostalgic across these 12 songs, with protagonists idling their time in parks and drinking cans of beer while thinking about long-gone significant others. The group employs violins and other strings to amplify the lurking hurt on “Fish” and “Kimiga Door O Shimeta Ato.” Speedy guitar sprints such as “Takanero Hanakosan” sound upbeat but betray sad undercurrents. Amid all of Love Story's painful reflections, it also highlights the hope and happy endings. Rollicking rock cuts such as “003” deliver chipper rhythms over which Shimizu sings about opening oneself up to intimacy, despite the ever-looming threat of heartbreak. The joy of nights in, watching rented movies and eating convenience-store ice cream, bursts out on the acoustic “Hikarino Machi,” while closer “Setagaya Love Story” uses back number’s singular ballad approach to build a swelling declaration of new romance set outside of a Tokyo neighborhood’s train station. It’s a triumphant ending from a trio that is hell-bent on love.
Albums
- 2015
- 2014
- 2011
Music Videos
- 2015
More To Hear
- back numberの清水依与吏が登場。ニューアルバム『ユーモア』を語る
- back numberの清水依与吏が登場。ニューアルバム『ユーモア』を語る
- 第3回はback numberを特集。
About back number
Rock trio back number incorporate swooping string sections and chugging guitars in swooning ballads about new love or desperate desire. Lead vocalist Iyori Shimizu longed to start a band while still living in his home region of Gunma Prefecture in 2004 and within a couple of years he recruited bassist Kazuya Kojima and drummer Hisashi Kurihara for the project. The next few years found back number honing their skills around Gunma, performing small live shows and eventually winning a competition to appear at the 2008 edition of the Shonan Music Festival Vol. 2. It proved a good introduction to the style they had been polishing over the previous months: midtempo rock pushed forward by folksy strumming and leading to hooks showcasing Shimizu’s urgent, impassioned singing. Their breakthrough, though, came in 2011 when they started adding splashes of piano and violin to their rock ballads, amping up the emotions central to numbers like “Omoidasenakunaru Sonohimade.” The three-piece embraced this new sonic approach even more, crafting heart-tugging songs that incorporated bell chimes (“Christmas Song”) or an expanded orchestral sound (“Happy End”). These added instrumentations provided a dramatic backdrop for back number’s celebration of love in all its forms, with Shimizu proving his knack for finding new ways of expressing deep affection again and again.
- ORIGIN
- Japan
- FORMED
- 2004
- GENRE
- J-Pop