About

"Idol" is the theme song for the anime series Oshi No Ko, titled performed by Japanese music superduo YOASOBI. Following its release in mid-April 2023, the song went viral and quickly led to an official English-language version, as well as several covers and fan animations online.

Origin

On April 12th, 2023, the same day Oshi No Ko first aired, the Ayase / YOASOBI YouTube account uploaded the official music video for "Idol," which is an extended version of the opening credits for Oshi No Ko. The video (shown below) gained over 167 million views in two months.

Spread

The song rapidly became popularized online, as covers and other forms of tributes to the song began growing prevalent on YouTube in the following weeks. For example, on May 19th, 2023, YouTuber LittleVMills posted a heavy metal cover of the song, gaining over 1.2 million views in three weeks (shown below, left). On June 9th, Italian YouTuber davie504 notably posted a cover, gaining over 576,000 views in five days (shown below, right).

Some also made fan animations for the song's video. For example, on May 13th, 2023, YouTuber Dejoubu reanimated the video using Genshin Impact characters, gaining over 4,900 views in one month (shown below, left). On June 4th, YouTuber KalaBanga uploaded an animation that replaced Oshi No Ko character Ai with Peter Griffin, gaining over 12,000 views in 10 days (shown below, right).

On April 25th, 2023, YouTuber Dedi Santoso posted a video of YOASOBI performing the song live, which had also been growing popular on TikTok.^[1] The upload gained over 220,000 views in six weeks (shown below, left). Additionally, on May 25th, YOASOBI posted an English-language version of the song, gaining over 14 million views in two weeks (shown below, right).