With the end of June upon us, Oricon has finally released their half year rankings for 2022. Surprising no one, popular nine-member Johnny’s boy group Snow Man took the top spot with hitting number one on both the Singles and Album ranking. Their single “Brother Beat” took number one by selling over 850,000 copies. This is continuing from last year’s successful number one hit Grandeur, which also took first place in the first half of 2021. Because of this success, Snow Man has became the first group since their older brother group ARASHI to have done so in consecutive years. They are also the fifth artist to have all five of their releases sell over 500,000 copies consecutively. Boys group INI with their single “I”, and Snow Man’s younger brother group Naniwa Danshi with their single “The Answer/ Schiare”, took second and third respectively.

Johnny’s domination didn’t stop with just Snow Man, as their brother group SixTONES has also took the number one spot in top seller with their album CITY for the first six months of 2022 by selling over 560,000 copies. Like Snow Man, this is continuing from their last year successful hit 1ST and are the fifth artist to have done so. Korean group SEVENTEEN with their album Face the Sun, along with popular girl idol group Nogizaka 46, with their album Time flies took second and third respectively.

On the digital side, anime songs took over the singles with vocalist Aimer taking number one with their song “Sankyo Sanaka”, the theme song for the popular Demon Slayer series. With King Gnu taking both second and third with Sakayume and Ichizu respectively, Ichizu was used as the theme song for the popular Jijitsu Kaisen Zero movie. Ado with her first album Kyougen also took the top spot for the digital album side and became the first female solo artist to do so.

We at OTY like to congratulate all the artists for a successful 2022 so far and hope for them to finish out the year strong!