"Moment" is a song by

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

band

SMAP SMAP was a Japanese boy band, composed of Masahiro Nakai, Takuya Kimura, Goro Inagaki, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, and Shingo Katori. The group was created in 1988 by music producer Johnny Kitagawa, founder of Johnny & Associates, originally as a six-pi ...

. Released as a single on August 1, 2012, the song was used as the theme song for the

Tokyo Broadcasting System Television JORX-DTV, branded as is the flagship station of the Japan News Network (JNN), owned-and-operated by , a subsidiary of JNN's owner, TBS Holdings. It operates in the Kantō region and broadcasts its content nationally through TBS-JNN Networ ...

broadcast of the

2012 Summer Olympics The 2012 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012) was an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. The first event, the ...

, for which SMAP member

Masahiro Nakai is a Japanese television host, actor, news presenter, radio personality. He was the leader of the now defunct boy band SMAP, which had been the best-selling boy band in Asia. While working as a member of a boy band, he worked extensively as a te ...

was the main sportscaster. It was written by the band

Sakanaction , stylised as sakanaction, are a Japanese rock band from Sapporo, Hokkaido. Their music is a fusion of alternative rock, electronic, pop, and new wave styles. The band consists of five members: Ichiro Yamaguchi, Motoharu Iwadera, Ami Kusakari, ...

's vocalist and songwriter

Ichiro Yamaguchi , is a Japanese musician. He is the vocalist, guitarist and songwriter for the Hokkaido rock band Sakanaction. Biography Ichiro Yamaguchi was born in Otaru, Hokkaido in 1980. He grew up listening to a wide variety of music, as his father ran a ...

, while the single's B-side "Te o Tsunagō" was written by producer

Kenichi Maeyamada , also known as , is a Japanese composer, lyricist, and musician. His primary work is composing anime theme songs and for J-pop musicians. He contracts through Supalove, a Japanese record label. He has released a number of anime and video game mu ...

. The single was commercially successful, reaching number one on

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in Nov ...

's singles chart, and was certified gold by the

Recording Industry Association of Japan The is an industry trade group composed of Japanese corporations involved in the music industry. It was founded in 1942 as the Japan Phonogram Record Cultural Association, and adopted its current name in 1969. The RIAJ's activities include pr ...

Background and development

Since 2004, SMAP songs had been used by

to pair with their Olympic Games coverage, with "Susume!" from ''SMAP 016/MIJ'' (2004) used for the Athens

2004 Summer Olympics The 2004 Summer Olympics ( el, Θερινοί Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες 2004, ), officially the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad ( el, Αγώνες της 28ης Ολυμπιάδας, ) and also known as Athens 2004 ( el, Αθήνα 2004), ...

broadcast, and "Kono Toki, Kitto Yume ja Nai" (2008) for the Beijing

2008 Summer Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and also known as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 Na ...

. The band's single "Triangle" (2006) was similarly used by

TV Asahi JOEX-DTV (channel 5), branded as (also known as EX and and stylized as TV asahi), is a television station that is owned and operated by the subsidiary of certified broadcasting holding company , itself controlled by The Asahi Shimbun Compan ...

for their broadcasts of the Torino

2006 Winter Olympics The 2006 Winter Olympics, officially the XX Olympic Winter Games ( it, XX Giochi olimpici invernali) and also known as Torino 2006, were a winter multi-sport event held from 10 to 26 February 2006 in Turin, Italy. This marked the second t ...

and the Vancouver

2010 Winter Olympics )'' , nations = 82 , athletes = 2,626 , events = 86 in 7 sports (15 disciplines) , opening = February 12, 2010 , closing = February 28, 2010 , opened_by = Governor General Michaëlle Jean , cauldron = Catriona Le May DoanNancy GreeneWayne Gretz ...

. In 2010, SMAP worked together with

member

, when he created the song "Magic Time" for their album ''We Are SMAP!''. Sakanaction's most recently released single at the time, "

Boku to Hana () is a song by Japanese band Sakanaction. The theme song for the Tsuyoshi Kusanagi-starring medical drama ''37-sai de Isha ni Natta Boku: Kenshui Junjō Monogatari'', it was released as a single by the band in May 2012, the first from their six ...

" (2012), acted as the theme song for the drama ''37-sai de Isha ni Natta Boku: Kenshui Junjō Monogatari'', in which SMAP member

Tsuyoshi Kusanagi is a Japanese actor, singer, television host, and a former member of SMAP, one of the best-selling boy bands in Asia. Early life Kusanagi grew up in Kasukabe, Saitama, Japan. Career Music In 1987, at age 13, Kusanagi auditioned to enter John ...

starred. A week after the single was released, the band released their 20th studio album, ''Gift of SMAP'', despite the song not appearing on the album.

Writing and production

When SMAP's production team asked Yamaguchi to create the song, he did not know if the song was going to be a single or an album song as "Magic Time" had been. Yamaguchi created the song after listening to SMAP's previous singles, attempting to create a medium tempo song that could express the fire in someone's heart. Yamaguchi felt that writing the song had been a learning process for him, as he needed to consider what type of pop music would suit the band and the song from a different perspective to how he wrote pop music for his band Sakanaction. The song's lyrics have a message of encouragement for Olympic athletes. The song is a

pop song Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. The terms ''popular music'' and ''pop music'' are often used interchangeably, although the former describe ...

build on top of fast tempo drums and synthesized string sounds. CDJournal reviewers felt that the song was "overflowing" with a fast pace, feeling it lyrically emphasized the importance of now.

Commercial reception

The single reached number one on

's weekly singles chart. As this was the band's 48th single top chart in the top ten, this broke the record for a male artist to do so at the time, with SMAP beating rock band

B'z are a Japanese rock duo, consisting of guitarist, composer and producer Takahiro "Tak" Matsumoto and vocalist and lyricist Koshi Inaba, 佐伯明『B'z ウルトラクロニクル』ソニー・マガジンズ、2003年。新型光�B'zはなぜ ...

record of 47 releases. The song also became the most commercially broadcast theme song for the London Olympics in Japan, surpassing

Ikimono-gakari The romanization of the group's name does not have the hyphen according to Sony's websites for their albums. is a Japanese pop rock musical duo, duo from Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan consisting of Yoshiki Mizuno and Kiyoe Yoshioka. The group starte ...

's theme song for the

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestri ...

broadcast, "Kaze ga Fuiteiru".

Track listings

Chart rankings

Sales and certifications

Release history

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moment (SMAP song) 2012 singles 2012 songs 2012 Summer Olympics Japanese-language songs Olympic theme songs Songs written by Ichiro Yamaguchi Victor Entertainment singles Billboard Japan Hot 100 number-one singles Oricon Weekly number-one singles