Mrs. GREEN APPLE

Singer/composer Motoki Omori found an outlet for his sympathetic lyrics and happy, breakneck pop-punk while he was still roaming the halls of his Tokyo high school in the early 2010s. There, he assembled Hiroto Wakal (guitar), Ryoka Fujisawa (keyboards), Kiyokatsu Takano (bass) and Ayaka Yamanaka (drums). Omori and company recorded their first mini album, Introduction, in 2014 and were already packing clubs, but they exploded the following year, when their rambunctious single "Speaking" (which cathartically urges, "Try shouting out loud without hiding your pain") was used as the closing theme for the anime smash Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V. Like slightly older J-pop acts such as sumika, Mrs. Green Apple blend romantic compassion, sung in Omori's almost operatically high voice, with careening J-pop precision, a combination that proved irresistible to the Japanese charts. The quintet's debut album, Progressive, reached both Japan's Oricon and Billboard Top 10s, as did its three successors. Released in 2019, Attitude celebrated Omori's aesthetic romanticism in both its sophisticated rock-symphonic title track ("You’re an artistry addict," he sings, probably to himself) and, fittingly, "Romanticism", a pop-prog declaration of humanity. In July 2020, the band announced on their Facebook page "the end of Phase 1”, which included a split with their management, and the launch of "Project-MGA”, a collaborative project with creators who demonstrate a strong passion for Mrs. Green Apple.