Yutori, BILLY BOO, Yobahi and others show off their appeal with "Sony Music Labels 2025"

On Thursday, March 6th, 2025, the convention event “Sony Music Labels 2025” was held at Zepp DiverCity in Tokyo, featuring new artists from Sony Music Labels.

With the online event being held during the COVID-19 pandemic, this was the 10th anniversary of the start of 2015, and the event was held in a hybrid event, and a live online broadcast will also be held on Stagecrowd. Seven artists with a wide variety of musical genres and styles, including rock bands, pop duos, dance and vocal groups, and singer-songwriters, will appear. The performances that make use of each individual’s individuality and uniqueness fully demonstrated the high potential of artists.

This article will feature three artists and present live reports from the promising newcomers of 2025, which have the potential to make the music scene more lively.

■yutori

The opening theme for “Sony Music Labels 2025” was Yutori, a four-member band with an average age of 21, featuring female vocalist Sato Kotoko. When the band members were in position, Sato, carrying a white electric guitar, sang “Midnight” on his own. The audience was enveloped with a urgent singing voice that seemed to have leaked out from the depths of their hearts, just like the catchphrase of “sing unvoiced words,” and the live performances and off-shot footage of the large festivals and events they had appeared in, as well as the instantly completed Spotify O-EAST performances, with the loud rock number “Kimi to Haku,” a guitar playing in a right hand style, was shown on the screen, along with the phrase “I want to remain the same even as an adult.” They fully demonstrated their ability to create a whirlwind in the live scene, and at the end they spoke in a quiet, restrained voice that contrasts with the pleasant singing style, “Where shall we meet again?”, then turned to the drums and the four of them finished off with a sound.

PHOTO BY Ryohei Nakayama

■BILLY BOO

BILLY BOO, a four-member band that combines a mixed sound that combines black music such as hip-hop and R&B with J-POP and rock, with catchy melody that makes you want to hum, started their live performance with the ballad “Lens,” which was a viral hit in the background music of ABEMA’s romance reality show “Don’t Deceived by You and the Wolf.” The song begins with only electric guitar accompaniment, and first, he conveys the charm of KAZUKI UJIIE’s vocals to the audience, which is described as a natural singing voice that will never be forgotten once you hear it, and the MC expressed his determination, saying, “I want to stand on a big stage with the music that gave us life for us, who never did what we did.” The new songs “Love Sodi” and “Siren,” which have been decided to be used as the ending theme for the anime “Solving Mystery After Dinner,” which will start airing in April this year, have completely changed, and KAZUKI UJIIE performs on stage with light steps. The tight and mellow grooves created by the band naturally shaking the audience’s bodies, showing off their high level of skills as a musician.

■Yobahi

Yobahi, a three-piece band from Gifu Prefecture, who has the concept of “taking your heart on sleepless nights,” greeted the audience by saying, “We will deliver songs that cuddle up to lonely nights,” and started the live show with “Sakura Trip,” which begins with a sad, transparent falsetto by Nakatsu. They play three songs that convey Yobahi’s charms, including “Tsurara,” which was used as the ending theme for the TV anime “Blue Exorcist: Yukinoka Arc,” and “Satsuma Tou,” which was a hot topic for its dramatic, full-animated music video by animator 10010 (Tento Ten). The band’s free and aggressive band ensemble, which is also similar to online music, echoed by an emotional singing voice that embodies the shaking of the protagonist’s heart in the song. On the screen on stage, animation depicting the stories of “you” and “me” different songs were displayed, further highlighting Yobahi’s worldview. They are active without showing their true faces or age, and although it is impossible to see their expressions as they are illuminated in the backlight at live shows, it is precisely that the audience is drawn to the story of the song and can be immersed in it. As a new flag bearer of narrative music, he was on a stage where he could overlap with his own life, regardless of gender or age.

Flower arrangements will be set up in the lobby of Zepp DiverCity, the local area. The Sony Music Group is working on the Rebloom Flower Project, which collects and reuses celebratory flowers, and supports this activity and collects and reuses celebratory flowers that have been given to live shows by artists affiliated with SML. Some of the decorations displayed at the event venue were also decorated using the reclaimed flowers, and SML expressed an attitude of contributing to creating a sustainable future while cherishing special moments that will brighten up the music.