HALCALI Talk ‘Otsukare SUMMER’ Going Viral & Returning to Music after a 14-Year ‘Career Gap’: Billboard Japan Women in Music Interview
Categoria: Musica
Billboard Japan spoke with the pair, who opened up about the recent comeback and the years in between.
Por Billboard | 29/09/2026
HALCALI spoke with Billboard Japan for the latest installment of its Women in Music interview series. The initiative launched in 2022 to celebrate artists, producers and executives who have made significant contributions to music and entertainment and inspired other women through their work, following the footsteps of Billboard’s annual Women in Music honors. This series featuring female players in the Japanese entertainment industry is one of the highlights of Japan’s WIM project. HALCA and YUCALI of HALCALI picked up the mic again for the first time in 14 years, after “Otsukare SUMMER,” a track from their 2003 album, went viral outside of Japan 22 years after its release. Now mothers, the two laugh as they describe that stretch of time — the one society labels a “career gap” — as nothing short of the best. Billboard Japan spoke with the pair, who opened up about the recent comeback and the years in between. In the spring of 2025, when you found out that “Otsukare SUMMER” had gone viral overseas, where were you and what were you doing? HALCA: Someone at the record label was the first to catch that the streaming numbers were moving. I think I was just at home, living my normal life. Then I got a LINE message like, “Hey, your play count is blowing up.” [ Laughs ] YUCALI: My first reaction was, “Huh,” like it was someone else’s news. It wasn’t something that started in Japan and we hadn’t promoted it ourselves, so hearing that it was bubbling up organically from outside, I remember texting HALCA, saying, “Feels strange, doesn’t it?” Was there a moment when it really hit you that this might be something huge? HALCA: For me there were two. One was opening social media on my phone and having my feed fill up with people dancing to our song. I didn’t even have to go looking for it, it just came to me, and I thought, “This is really going viral!” [ Laughs ] The other was realizing how many people around me knew “Otsukare SUMMER” without knowing HALCALI at all. Knowing the song was being heard that widely around the world made me really happy. “Otsukare SUMMER” wasn’t a single, and it never had a music video — it was a track on your first album. YUCALI: At the time it came out, it was just a song on the album, but it was one we loved, so we kept putting it in our concert setlists almost every summer. It makes me happy to have a song that still holds up after all this time, one we can offer with real confidence. And because we’re now in an era where so many people can hear it through streaming, rather than one where you had to buy the album to hear it, people around the world discovered how good this song is. I’m really proud of that. On Sept. 2, you released the new song “Guin Guin Guin,” tied in as the September “Song of the Month” for the TV show Synapshooo . YUCALI: “Otsukare SUMMER” got us thinking about what