Make Believe Mailer #145: The Mrs. GREEN APPLE Monoculture
Dessert Goods, Mall Tie-ups And A Very Un-2020s Popularity!
Musicians and convenience stores collaborate all the time on limited-edition goods or items, but rarely does an artist become the face of a nationwide ad campaign. Most, though, aren’t Mrs. GREEN APPLE.
The trio is currently marking its 10th anniversary, and among the celebration is a tie-up with Lawson, which finds the group starring in its own commercial while their image both real and vaguely Peanuts-y via cartoon characters can be found covering all outlets. As part of the konbini-based party, a bunch of original items are on sale or capable of being won (a Mrs. GREEN APPLE suitcase????), along with three special foods.
As someone long obsessed with limited-edition eats — especially those given a pop connection — I’m going to be honest here in saying the majority of GREEN APPLE items at Lawson look horrible. The real “yikes” is the “MGA Special Mix” sandwich, wherein each member of the band creates a snack featuring the flavors they love. From the start I’m hesitant, because I find the convenience store sandwich to be the most overrated item in this space. Not helping is what they landed on: onion-accented chicken katsu (OK), potato salad and broccoli (hmmmm, I don’t know), and egg with yakisoba (unholy). I’ll do a lot for the newsletter, but not this.
Then there’s a roll cake that…just looks like a roll cake, but pudding flavored.
That leaves one intriguing item — the MGA Melon-pan-shaped cream puff. Now this is interesting, as the group takes a perfectly fine but never a first choice dessert in melon pan and flips it into the always delightful softness of a puff pastry filled with custard. This is the kind of junk food I’m happy to buy and eat for breakfast on a weekday.
It was a revelation. The MGA collab boasts the crunchier texture of melon pan, but whereas the traditional form of this baked good contains nothing inside but disappointment, the J-pop-approved hybrid is filled with sweet custard. In taste and color, it triggered a deep memory of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Hostess Pies from my childhood, not quite reaching the disgusting highs of that but being a surprisingly solid simulacrum, at least for whatever emains of my chubby-boy tastebuds.
Fittingly, these Lawson items serve as a solid metaphor for what has made Mrs. GREEN APPLE the biggest band in Japan. They feature unlikely and somewhat contradictory combinations. Sometimes, you get noodles stuffed in bread smeared with eggs, and it’s the worst thing imaginable. Yet other times, it’s something genuinely novel and good.
Whether you vibe with its music or hate it, Mrs. GREEN APPLE is undeniably the most popular group in Japan right now. Billboard Japan’s 2025 mid-year charts found the trio taking the top spot in three major categories — the Hot 100 Song chart, the Hot Albums chart and Top Artist. Yet that doesn’t really get at the data-centric dominance they’ve managed. They account for half of the top ten of the singles ranking1, with four of the top five coming courtesy of the band. The gold and bronze placement for full-lengths goes to GREEN APPLE for works not even released in 2024, with third place belonging to a work from before the pandemic.
Here’s what Spofity Japan’s Top 50 domestic chart looked like as of this Thursday, a just after Mrs. GREEN APPLE released 10, a best-of celebrating a decade of being in the game. At the start of the week, the Jin song was at four, so credit for BTS fans for vaulting it back up…but the top ten is 70 percent APPLE.
Yet as tends to be the case in the numbers-centric reality of the 2020s, to truly appreciate the omnipresence of this group requires being on the ground. The Lawson collaboration is just the latest high-level commercial tie-up Mrs. GREEN APPLE can point to, though it might not be as big as the three becoming sorta-kinda mascots for this summer’s Tokyo Disneyland campaign. Not everybody gets to sit in a car with Mickey Mouse. They appear on TV constantly, whether in commercials or performing on music shows or chatting on variety programs.
Mrs. GREEN APPLE have managed something in Japan that I thought had become impossible in the fragmented 2020s — the band is a monocultural touchstone, in a way unlike anything else in the entertainment world we find ourselves today.
To make this anecdotal, Mrs. GREEN APPLE are one of the only contemporary pop acts in Japan that I think every demographic knows. My five-year-old daughter doesn’t need its best-of album because she’s already learned the band’s catalog via her late 20’s teacher, a huge fan who plays it in class. I know folks in the over-70 set in on this group, while those in my age range, often coming from a more indie-rock or club background, are aware of them…and not just a song, but the outfit as a whole. Foreign friends I meet with who have a very general knowledge of J-pop know Mrs. GREEN APPLE, even if the opinion that follows is “I don’t get it2.”
Thematically, I don’t think it’s too complicated. Despite having a more upbeat and theatrical sound than compatriots of this decade, Mrs. GREEN APPLE’s songs still focus on the challenges of modern Japanese life. A hit like “Bitter Vacances,” above, builds around the idea of the daily grind and especially work being grueling. Whereas an Ado screamed at society, this band approaches the realities of the 21st century by finding optimism, urging the listener to take it a little easier over fiddle playing. The group are always positive — sometimes painfully so — but it’s rooted in familiar malaise.
I’ve always viewed Mrs. GREEN APPLE being the 2020s evolution of Sekai No Owari3, a group playing in a very similar sonic toy box and boasting similarly optimistic lyrics bordering on the laughable (which 4chan most certainly mocked in the 2010s). The Idol Cast, though, made a great comparison on a recent episode I guested on to talk GREEN APPLE — the trio also took the spot of Arashi.
Perhaps at first brush it doesn’t feel right on an aesthetic level — one is a fantastical band, the other is a gaggle of idol boys. Yet having thought on it I think it’s dead on, in terms of the art itself (both leaning towards the upbeat and sometimes extremely silly) and especially in status. I argued in The Japan Times back when Arashi went on hiatus they were the ultimate pop project of the Heisei era. “It's possible that no entertainers will ever be as ubiquitous in Japan again,” I wrote, because that unit existed in a period before the internet ate everything up.
But I think I’m trending wrong on that one, because Mrs. GREEN APPLE are approaching that point via its music (hell, vocalist Motoki Ohmori has started acting in movies too, so it could turn into a multi-media dominance too).
Fittingly, to mark 10 years going, the band has taken to nodding to the Heisei Era itself, almost as if to underline what they’ve managed.
Mrs. GREEN APPLE was already a pretty inescapable part of Japanese life in 2025, but to go to Shibuya right now is to see it taken to an extreme. To commemorate the release of 10, a huge chunk of the busy Tokyo neighborhood has been APPLE-fied. Shibuya Tsutaya is covered in pictures of and videos featuring the members of the group, with its very logo being transformed. Inside is a special exhibit with statues, more photos and a walls of CDs (remember this), requiring a reservation made in advance.
Not far away, the hulking Miyashita Park shopping center goes bigger. The path leading to the main entrance featured biggie-sized replications of the band’s albums and singles4, ending with a giant version of its best-of collection. There’s like a bunch of different things happening at the elevated mall, as I see at least three snaking lines around and inside while I explore. There’s a stamp rally, gatcha corners and even Mighty-Max-sized versions of GREEN APPLE’s album hidden in bushes, prompting people to bend down to snap photos.
If you’re picking up on a theme, it’s “CDs.” One of the many odd details about this band is that, despite being very domestic facing and feeling outside of the current streaming-first wave of J-pop, they haven’t released many CDs. Most of the band’s singles are digital only. So 10, out on CD, feels like something significant for the trio — and allows them to connect themselves to the monocultural forces of yesteryear.
The exterior of Shibuya Tsutaya features a big note written by Ohmori focused on how, despite streaming services being dandy, there’s something special about physical media like CDs. The exhibit inside Tsutaya boasts a huge wall displaying “Heisei CD Rankings” from all 32 years of the era, showing which discs sold the most every year. In one of the wildest twists, a video looping in front of Tsutaya finds Mrs. GREEN APPLE explaining how to listen to a CD, as if the youngsters of the 2020s would try eating it.
In Japan, Mrs. GREEN APPLE towers over popular music. Yet as copies of 10 appeared on store shelves, another midyear list came out. Spotify Japan shared its ranking of 2025 Japanese songs as listened to by overseas users. Owing to the nature of the platform, plenty of now-foundational 2020s J-pop cuts (“Yoru Ni Kakeruo,” “NIGHT DANCER”) along with old numbers (“Tokyo Drift”) co-exist with Creepy Nuts. Still, the names appearing on the list offer an overall good snapshot of who is powering the industry so far this decade.
The one big name missing? Mrs. GREEN APPLE.
The Heisei nods the band have been making might be more on the nose than they think. Despite J-pop enjoying its biggest step into the global limelight possibly ever, the country’s most popular artist isn’t really part of it.
I think it’s because everything Mrs. GREEN APPLE has done to become the musical monoculture at home has, for the time being, held them back a bit internationally…perhaps by design.
What the trio have managed is to become everything to everyone in Japan. In the same way that its music can be slippery in terms of genre, Mrs. GREEN APPLE the band are somewhat sneakily playing all corners without being pigeonhold as any one thing. Over the last decade, they’ve made many songs for TV dramas and movies and various genres. They’ve created commercial works for all kinds of products, and in recent years have appeared themselves in ads for beer, theme parks and convenience store chains among others. Nobody considers Mrs. GREEN APPLE an “anime artist,” yet they’re responsible for five tunes tied to the medium5, with biggest hit “Lilac” serving as the opening for a baseball cartoon.
It’s an omnipresent group always topping charts, but doing so primarily through digital releases6. Mrs. GREEN APPLE is popular on TikTok and certainly lean into it — click that “breakfast” video again, they know what they are doing — but they aren’t defined by it. To turn to industry observations, Mrs. GREEN APPLE play the proverbial game well — at Music Awards Japan, the three members showed up to the Premier Ceremony, a pretty ho-hum event the day before the main televised bonanza, to still make their presence felt. They then also showed up at an after party for label and government folks, something few other artists did7, and I watched them spend time talking with so many people. They seem savvy.
Mrs. GREEN APPLE have done everything they can at home to reach seemingly every demographic possible, achieving a kind of dominance that seemed impossible when the Japanese industry finally embraced the internet in the mid 2010s. The irony, though, is the international market is harder to navigate, and Japanese music is expected to be a specific thing, whether an anime theme or a TikTok surprise or an algorithm recommendation.
Mrs. GREEN APPLE refuse to be tagged by one thing, which means they actually aren’t a prevalent part of the biggest J-pop push since the ‘90s.
Though I think they are definitely about to give it a swing. The release of 10 feels like the absolute peak of Mrs. GREEN APPLE’s power in Japan. So what comes next? In the past, a pivot to the West was viewed as only logical when sales at home sagged (Pink Lady) or momentum domestically seemed ready to be transferred (Utada, Matsuda). More recently, YOASOBI and Ado have show artists can operate in both spaces, though Fujii Kaze appears to be leaning into the English with his forthcoming full-length album.
So where does this trio fall? Something more calculated…this is a band that went on hiatus in the early 2020s not for any dramatic reasons, but rather because its “phase one” ended and they needed to switch into “phase two,” which fostered the mega popularity of today. I feel confident saying “phase three” will be globally minded, hinted at by a series of South Korean shows earlier this year and, at least to me, the teaser for its dome tour coming at the end of this year and serving as the blowout to its decade-together celebration. It’s themed around the Tower Of Babel…hmmmm…and prominently features a bald eagle…HMMMMMM…which is telegraphing the inevitable pre-encore announcement pretty well8.
Really, it would be the only way to go. Mrs. GREEN APPLE have completely consumed the J-pop industry in 2025 — the only place to go is outside of it.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Check out the Best Of 2025 Spotify Playlist here!
And I bet they would have nabbed a majority if the whole “Columbus” music video controversy didn’t happen.
I don’t want to dwell on the musical quality of Mrs. GREEN APPLE because I’ve done that plenty around these parts, though I will admit that my stance on them has softened a bit in 2025 owing to 1. seeing them perform in person at Music Awards Japan and being genuinely shocked at how good they are live and 2. visiting the United States in May and being exposed to contemporary American pop, which has made me appreciate the weirdness of Mrs. GREEN APPLE much more. I still hate “Dancehall” but man I’d happily listen to that in any instance than a second of that horrible Alex Warren song, somehow one of the top 10 most embarrassing developments from the country this year.
Though I think they also benefited from Official HIGE DANdism slowing down its output a bit, because Mrs. GREEN APPLE basically took its spot. Very funny coincidence that HIGE DAN also put out a song about the need for people to work less at the same time GREEN APPLE did.
Worth pointing out that all of these jumbo creations nod only to the group’s post 2021 output, aka its “phase two” era. The first five years of the band — where they were way closer to just being KANA-BOON-ish clones (Clone-A-Boons if you will) and featured two other people now out of the project is downplayed, seemingly.
Ohmori has also written for other top-level artists…most notably Ado, for the ONE PIECE film soundtrack, another layer to this all.
When lazy journalists hound on the Japanese market being obsessed with CDs, they tend to miss that this is powered almost entirely by idol fans…and not the stereotypical AKB dweebs of yesteryear, but teens obsessed with SEVENTEEN and the STARTO masses, among others. Mrs. GREEN APPLE presents the best counter to this — I feel safe calling them the biggest act in the country today, but they didn’t achieve that through physical sales, but rather a balanced approach putting an emphasis on streaming and YouTube.
Notable exception: everyone from Asobisystem, which was Atarashii Gakko!, FRUITS ZIPPER and CUTIE STREET all in their respective costumes. Now that’s dedication.
OK one jab…c’mon, be a little less obvious, dudes.