Superfly

Japan’s Superfly conquered arenas by updating classic ’60s blues-rock with sleek and stylish J-Pop flare. The project’s old-school chops were baked in from the start: founders Shiho Ochi (singer/lyricist) and Kōichi Tabo (guitarist/composer) met as students at Matsuyama University in Ehime Prefecture, bonding over the latter’s MiniDisc mixes of Western rock and soul and playing in a crew that covered The Rolling Stones, among others. The duo named themselves after a stone-cold funk jam—Curtis Mayfield’s “Super Fly”—and launched in 2007 with “Hello Hello,” a feast of soaring guitar and vocal melody that helped make Superfly’s self-titled debut the first in a string of platinum albums. Ochi’s love for powerful female singers like Janis Joplin runs deep—she was even invited to wail with Joplin’s Big Brother & the Holding Company at the original Woodstock site in 2009—and her flower-child persona inspired a revival of hippie dresses and headbands among Shibuya fashion mavens. Meanwhile, Superfly’s sonic style has been as diverse and colourful as the era that inspired them, spanning romantic ballads (2009’s Box Control), heavy rockers (2011’s Mind Travel) and sing-along pop (2015’s White). By 2020’s 0, that dynamism had expanded to include orchestral instrumentation and swinging jazz—assisted as always by crisp J-Pop production—pointing to a kaleidoscopic future where Superfly is free to transform any bygone era they please.