walking upstream…
Radwimps
sourcesNME — Meet Yojiro Noda, Tokyo's Answer To Thom Yorke (Oasis/Thom Yorke influence) · Forbes — Radwimps on scoring "Your Name." (Red Hot Chili Peppers/Oasis influence corroboration) · PopCrush — Radwimps interview (favorite artists list, Red Hot Chili Peppers corroboration) · The Japan Times — Radwimps and "Your Name." (bio, Makoto Shinkai collaboration) · Wikipedia — Radwimps
On a chilly Tuesday night in March 2017, Radwimps play Yokohama Arena — a venue Yojiro Noda and his bandmates once biked to as teenagers rehearsing nearby. The band came together in 2001, in their first year of high school, and spent years working the local circuit before an independent 2003 debut turned into a slow climb up Japan's charts. The real break came in 2016: hunting for a composer for his anime "Your Name.", director Makoto Shinkai asked his producer's favorite artist, and the answer came back "Radwimps." The film's soundtrack — anchored by the pleading "Zenzenzense" and the widescreen "Nandemonaiya" — made the band one of Japan's best-selling rock acts and carried Noda's densely literary, emotionally raw Japanese lyrics to an audience well beyond it. Underneath the scale, the songwriting still runs on the Britpop chord changes he taught himself as a teenager.
the sound in question
2016
NandemonaiyaRadwimps
walk the tributaries ↓
Oasis1990s · Britpop / Rock / Alternative rock
Noda has never hidden the debt. Asked by NME in 2023 which UK bands shaped him, he named "Oasis and Radiohead... especially Oasis," then admitted he taught himself guitar at 13 or 14 by working straight through their catalogue: "I can sing most of Oasis's songs: 'Don't Look Back In Anger', 'Live Forever', 'Whatever', 'Slide Away'." That's not a passing influence — it's the actual practice set he played chords against, years before he wrote a Radwimps song of his own.
listen: upstream & heresource: NME — Radwimps ↗
1996
Don't Look Back in AngerOasis
2016
ZenzenzenseRadwimps
listen forPlay Oasis's "Don't Look Back in Anger" — one of the four songs Noda named as his teenage guitar-practice set — against Radwimps' "Zenzenzense": both start from a plain strummed chord progression and build, verse by verse, toward a chorus melody simple enough for an entire arena to shout back untaught, the same engineered-for-a-crowd payoff Noda grew up singing along to.
Radiohead1990s · Art rock / Alternative rock
When NME profiled Noda in 2012 under the headline "Tokyo's Answer To Thom Yorke," he confirmed the reference point himself: "I started from Oasis and I love Thom Yorke." It's a quieter, harder-to-pin influence than Oasis — no specific songs named, just an artist he keeps circling back to — but it shows in how a Radwimps song will abandon a straightforward verse for something warier and more oblique, Noda's own take on Yorke's unsettled melodic instinct.
listen: upstream & heresource: NME — Radwimps ↗
1997
Karma PoliceRadiohead
2016
SparkleRadwimps
listen forSet Radiohead's "Karma Police" beside Radwimps' "Sparkle": both spend their opening bars on a plain, doubtful piano-and-guitar figure, the vocal almost whispered, before the arrangement swells underneath it without ever itself getting louder, until a quiet complaint has become a full-band, cathartic wall of sound — the same slow-burn architecture, verse into chorus, carried out in two different languages entirely.
Red Hot Chili Peppers1990s–2000s · Funk rock / Alternative rock / Funk metal / Rap rock
Ask other members of Radwimps who they love and the names scatter — Björk, Elliott Smith, Mr. Big — but Red Hot Chili Peppers is the one name that keeps recurring. Bassist Yusuke Takeda has named them in two separate interviews, once adding a specific pre-show ritual: "I watch their live DVD before our own shows to hype myself up." Guitarist Akira Kuwahara names them too, alongside Oasis — a rhythm section, not just a singer, choosing its own reference point.
listen: upstream & heresource: All Access Music — interview with Radwimps (Red Hot Chili Peppers influence, band facts) ↗
1991
Give It AwayRed Hot Chili Peppers
2006
Setsuna RensaRadwimps
listen forPlay the Chili Peppers' "Give It Away" against Radwimps' "Setsuna Rensa": both ride a tight, syncopated rock groove under a vocal that's rapped more than sung, needling out fast, half-joking lines — Anthony Kiedis's freewheeling verse, Noda's rapid-fire English aside about meeting Eddie Murphy somewhere in Hollywood — before each song snaps back open into a loud, straightforward full-band chorus.