Japanese rock veterans BACK-ON bring summery pop-punk vibes with new single NOT ENOUGH, featuring anime anthem heroes FLOW. The two-track is out now to download and stream worldwide and is the first single from BACK-ON during their 20th anniversary year.
Music from BACK-ON and FLOW, who are both no strangers to performing at anime and Japan festivals around the globe, has been streamed upwards of a mind blowing 500 million times. Their songs have appeared in some of Japan’s most well-known anime franchises, including Naruto, Dragon Ball Z and Gundam, and featured in memes and viral videos around the globe.
Despite sharing a similar history and experiences in Japan and overseas, ‘NOT ENOUGH’ is the first time BACK-ON and FLOW have worked together on a track. “As we were celebrating our 20th Anniversary, I felt honoured to have KOHSHI and KEIGO from FLOW join us on this track,” states TEEDA of BACK-ON. “We have so much in common as we have both done theme songs for various anime and have both been active overseas, I felt there was a good fusion of FLOW and BACK-ON’s unique, refreshing and energetic feeling captured in the production of this track. We really had a great time talking about the good old days and how we met, too.”
‘NOT ENOUGH’ featuring FLOW follows in the footsteps of BACK-ON’s 2021 single ‘Kill the Beat’ featuring JESSE, a rock icon known for shaping a whole generation of youth culture in Japan and whose band RIZE represented Japan on a global scale with performances at Live 8, Live Earth and the Vans Warped Tour. The track was featured in numerous playlists across DSPs, including Deezer’s ‘Heavy New Rock’ and Spotify’s ‘J-Rock Now’ and ‘Loud Rock Japan’. It’s also the follow up to BACK-ON’s 2021 summer track ‘WAVES’, which was featured in one of Spotify’s ‘Pop Punk’s Note Dead’ playlist, its largest for the genre, as well as the platform’s ‘Punk Japan’ playlist.
The single also includes a new version of ‘SKY WALKER’, which originally appeared on BACK-ON’s latest album Still B/O. This new version, named ‘SKY WALKER (TEEDA’s BEAT JACK)’ takes the original’s high-energy electro-rap rhythm, that featured J-rock riffs, chilled beats and massive pop melodies, and reworks the lyrical content entirely to bring a fresh hip hop and urban flavour to the track.
“It might be a bit surprising, but this was actually my first time doing a solo all-rap tune, and doing it over an existing track,” explains TEEDA. “I think it’s impossible to make something better than the original track, so I tried to keep the concept of rapping in a different style than BACK-ON, and look back over the last 20 years until now. I actually really enjoyed writing the lyrics and it was interesting how some words in the lyrics ended up being removed from the final version. I personally thought ‘this kind of track ain’t that bad too’. Hopefully you can figure out which part was censored and changed.”