"Brave" is a song by Japanese boy band

Arashi is a Japanese boy band consisting of five members formed under the Johnny & Associates talent agency. The members are Satoshi Ohno, Sho Sakurai, Masaki Aiba, Kazunari Ninomiya, and Jun Matsumoto. Arashi officially formed on September 15, 199 ...

, released as a single through

J Storm currently known as Storm Labels is a Japanese music and film company owned by Smile Up, formerly known as Johnny & Associates. It was established on November 12, 2001, initially as a label for the Johnny's group, Arashi, after which it was nam ...

on September 11, 2019. It serves as the theme song for

Nippon TV JOAX-DTV (channel 4), branded as (NTV) or Nippon TV, is a Japanese television station serving the Kantō region as the flagship station of the Nippon News Network and the Nippon Television Network System, owned and operated by the , a sub ...

's coverage of the

2019 Rugby World Cup The 2019 Rugby World Cup () was the ninth edition of the Rugby World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for men's rugby union teams. It was hosted in Japan from 20 September to 2 November in 12 venues all across the country. The opening matc ...

. It is the band's first release to be available in an edition including a

Blu-ray Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...

. The single debuted atop the weekly

Oricon Singles Chart The Oricon Singles Chart is the Japanese music industry-standard Single (music), singles popularity chart issued daily, weekly, monthly and yearly by Oricon. Chart rankings are based on physical singles' sales. Until 2017, Oricon did not track down ...

, selling 667,615 copies in its first week.

Background

The song was announced in October 2018, and was performed live for the first time the following month.

Composition

The song features a self-composed rap by

Sho Sakurai (born January 25, 1982) is a Japanese singer, songwriter, rapper, actor, news anchor, host and former radio host. He is a member of the boy band Arashi. Sakurai began his career in the entertainment industry when he joined the Japanese talent a ...

, who called it "an unusual single for Arashi. It is a rough and manly piece of music...I wrote the song while thinking about all the players who will be fighting hard, like when they're in a scrum".

Commercial performance

The song sold 667,615 copies in the first week, reaching number one on the Oricon weekly albums chart. It is also Arashi's first number-one single on the combined singles chart, which was established in 2019.

Track listing

Charts

References

2019 singles 2019 songs Arashi songs Oricon Weekly number-one singles Songs written by Figge Boström Songs written by Sho Sakurai {{2019-single-stub