DEWI ANDRIANI

ARAshi's Cool

Arashi (嵐, literally Storm) is a Japanese boy band consisting of Satoshi Ohno, Sho Sakurai, Masaki Aiba, Kazunari Ninomiya and Jun Matsumoto under the Japanese talent agency Johnny & Associates. The group was officially announced on September 15, 1999 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Arashi covers a wide range of music, including R&B, hip hop and various forms of pop music. Aside from being a popular idol group in Japan, the group is known across Asia and to J-pop fans all over the world.

After releasing one studio album, one greatest hits album, and six singles under the Pony Canyon label, the group moved to the Johnny's subsidiary label, J Storm in 2002, initially set up for their succeeding releases. Most of the group's album and single releases have debuted at the top of the Japanese Oricon charts. Nine years after their debut they took the top two placings on the 2008 annual sales ranking, attesting to the group's longevity in the Japanese music scene in spite of their idol group image.

2009: 10th anniversary

The group released two double A-side singles "Believe / Kumorinochi, Kaisei" and "Ashita no Kioku/Crazy Moon: Kimi wa Muteki" on March 4 and May 27 respectively in 2009. Both singles sold over 500,000 copies in first week sales, making Arashi the first artist to have two consecutive singles exceed the 500,000 mark within a week in seven years seven months since Keisuke Kuwata. Their live DVD Arashi Around Asia 2008 in Tokyo, released on March 25, topped the comprehensive DVD sales rankings for three consecutive weeks on the Oricon charts, making them the first artist to do so since the rankings started in April 1999.^[26] Prior to this, other artists such as Mr. Children, Hikaru Utada and Ayumi Hamasaki could only top the charts for two consecutive weeks. By the end of the first half of 2009, the group had taken over the top spot in both the singles and DVD categories. The last time an artist simultaneously topped two categories was Hikaru Utada in 2001. Furthermore, Arashi was the first artist to dominate the top two spots in the singles category for the first half of the year since Hikaru Genji in 1988.^[29] Arashi Around Asia 2008 in Tokyo also became the first music DVD in Oricon history to be number one for a first half of the year ranking.

At the end of June, Arashi announced their tenth anniversary tour, which included three consecutive shows at the National Stadium in Tokyo once again. They became the first artist ever to play at the stadium for three days straight. Their third single of the year, "Everything", was released on July 1, 2009. With the single selling over 342,000 copies in the first week, Arashi has the three best first-week single sales of 2009 at this point in time. By the end of July, another major announcement was made. The group's game show VS Arashi would move from its half-hour Saturday afternoon time slot to an hour-long Thursday night time slot at 7:00 JST from October 22, 2009 onwards, making it Arashi's first show to air during Golden Time.

They released their greatest hits album All the Best! 1999-2009 on August 19, 2009, featuring most of their singles since debut, a new song with lyrics written by the members themselves and a limited edition third disc containing ten of the group's selections. Thirteen days after the release, the album broke the one million mark, a first in Arashi's history. It became the first album of 2009 to break one million.