ONE OK ROCK: Worldwide Japanese Band

One Ok Rock (stylized as ONE OK ROCK) is a Japanese rock band formed in 2005 in Tokyo.

Hello back again to CHOCHO Blog. In my second post, I will introduce One Ok Rock to you.

This time I will introduce them, namely my favorite rock band from Japan. I first heard them when I was in 3rd grade of junior high school, when it was my friend who introduced their song to me. The first song I heard was “Heartache” a song with a sad feel that makes the listener feel it.

Since then, I’ve been listening to their songs more and more until now. Why do I like their songs? because their songs are uniquely a mixture of Japanese and English. Besides that, Taka’s voice as a vocalist attracted me. In addition, they have also released many songs and are still active today. My dream is to one day be able to hear them sing live!

By the way have you ever heard the name of the band or even their song? It’s good if you’ve been, if you haven’t heard of it. Come read my post about them!

The band consists of Taka (vocalist), Toru (guitarist), Ryota (bassist), and Tomoya (drummer). At first the band had five members, but guitarist Alex left in 2009

Due to a scandal with a 19-year-old student, Alex is forced to leave the group. Not only the vocalist, the drummer Yu Koyanagi also left to pursue a career as an actor.

Now ONE OK ROCK consists of Takahiro Moriuchi (vocalist), Toru Yamashita (guitarist), Ryota Kohama (bassist), and Tomoya Kanki (drummer) who carry various types of music from alternative, rock, emo, post-hardcore, and pop rock.

The band was formed by Toru Yamashita who wanted to start a band when he was a high school student. He invited a friend named Ryota Kohama, his friend in a hip hop dance group called Heads. Ryota told him to learn to play bass, and Alex Onizawa invited to join. After seeing Taka Moriuchi play with a recycled song band, Toru invites him to join. Tomoya Kanki has completed their initial lineup as a drummer since 2006, but he was only made an official member when the band debuted in 2007

The band’s name, One Ok Rock, comes from the English phrase one o’clock which means 1 o’clock precisely. They used to practice band every weekend at 1.00 in the morning, so 1 o’clock became their band name. Japanese doesn’t know the difference between r and l so o’clock is called o’crock; oc was changed to OK until finally ok rock was used by them as the band name. Also, the name One Ok Rock can be written as “10969” (one-o-ku-ro(ku)ku).

The name ONE OK ROCK has become increasingly known outside of Japan after filling the OST song for the live action film ‘Samurai X’ entitled ‘Ruroni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno’ in 2012. The songs ‘Mighty Long Fall’ and ‘The Beginning’ were successfully watched 148 million times.

Instagram : oneokrockofficial

This group has genres of music such as alternative rock, post-hardcore and pop rock. From the various genres of music, they said they had an achievement, both in terms of songs and bands. ONE OK ROCK has won several awards both domestically and internationally. ONE OK OCK in 2017 was successful as the first musician from Japan to reach one billion streams on Spotify music. Their songs have been on Spotify since 2012, until now their songs have crossed 10 billion streams. Another award, at the MTV Europe Music Award in 2016 they won the Best Japanese Act category and the Eastern Breakthrough Male Band category at the Classic Rock Roll of Honor Awards.

Then at the 2020 Space Shower Music Awards, ONE OK ROCK managed to emerge victorious in the Artist of The Years category in 2020. Previously, at the event, they had won the Artist of The Year trophy as the best artist of 2019.