A quick question to all of those who are in/visit Japan: How popular are the pillows in Japan, and how do people view them in general? I asked a Japanese friend of mine what he thought of them, and he said that he'd never even heard of them, even though he's heard of other bands like L'Arc.

I don't visit Japan and I don't live there, but I can tell you that they are certainly much more popular than before, thanks to constant promotion by their new label, Avex Trax. For a long time, though, they were very much under the radar. Their fanbase has now grown to its greatest size yet since about 2007.

They had a popularity spike back when Strange Chameleon hit the charts well enough to keep King Records from dropping them again, and their popularity has been climbing since Avex started promoting them all over. Rock music in Japan is not the most popular genre in general, most of the college/high school aged people I met when I was over there hadn't even heard of anything in the rock area beyond the uber-poppy stuff like Mr. Children.

Basically, the pillows are popular enough to be able to get Budokan for their anniversary concert now, and their shows pretty much always sell out; part of it is because their fanbase tends to be just really gung-ho about them, and the other part is just because they've built up fans over the years and tend not to lose them. It seems to me that people who are into rock in Japan are VERY into music, rather than just the "I listen to whatever is popular and new" shit that we get over here when people say they love music.

Hm... thanks you two. I would imagine that a band that has a whole tribute album (Synchronized Rockers) featuring pretty popular artists (at least, I think Ellegarden and Straightener are popular...) would be pretty big. I mean, you don't see such albums for bands in the West. There are very few bands I could even imagine in the west that would have such an honor-- The Beatles being the first that comes to mind.

I may not be remembering correctly, but wasn't the peak of their popularity (before the most recent stuff) at the release of Runner's High?

[quote="Jomei"]I may not be remembering correctly, but wasn't the peak of their popularity (before the most recent stuff) at the release of Runner's High?[/quote]

No.

Their peak is right NOW, in turns of popularity.

Runner's High was their most popular album until they sold Wake Up! Wake Up! Wake Up! The ranking of pillows album sales are as follows:

1)PIED PIPER
2)Wake Up! Wake Up! Wake Up!
3)Rock-Stock and too Smoking the pillows
4)Fool on the Planet
5)Runner's high
6)MY FOOT

As you can see, everything released since Scarecrow has been massively popular. Runner's High was indeed popular though.

Tidus, I think you have a bad habit of not reading posts when you respond to them. I asked if RH was their high point [i]before their most recent albums[/i]. Maybe it's not clear what I meant by that, but I was talking about My Foot, Wake Up, and Pied Piper.

Misreading my post aside, thanks for confirming my recollection.

[quote="Jomei"]Tidus, I think you have a bad habit of not reading posts when you respond to them. I asked if RH was their high point [i]before their most recent albums[/i]. Maybe it's not clear what I meant by that, but I was talking about My Foot, Wake Up, and Pied Piper.

Misreading my post aside, thanks for confirming my recollection.[/quote]

I tend to read posts (long or short) extremely quickly, so I pass over stuff easily, haha, sorry.