This article is also available in Japanese: Read the Japanese version
At Taipei Dome in April 2026, ONE OK ROCK's Taka began speaking in English, then switched to Japanese partway through and reportedly said:
“Sorry for speaking in Japanese.” (「日本語で喋ってごめんね」)
This is a band that says it knew no English on its first U.S. tour and got by on body language. How that band handled Japanese in a big venue overseas seems to us to show what kind of band it is.
This article covers the four members and how the band formed, the numbers on its YouTube channel, its push into English, the album DETOX and the tour with the broken foot, and finally that night in Taipei and the new song “Fever.”
The channel figures were measured by this site on November 1, 2026. English-language articles are quoted in their original wording; words from Japanese-language sources (Real Sound, Natalie, and Pia) are our translation.
Who Are the Members of ONE OK ROCK?
ONE OK ROCK is a four-piece rock band formed in 2005. It has the four members below, and according to the Japanese music news site Natalie (in Japanese), the band debuted in 2007.
Taka (vocals)
Toru (guitar)
Ryota (bass)
Tomoya (drums)
The story starts, according to Voice of America's 2015 VOA Learning English article, with guitarist Toru forming a band with his high school friend Ryota. Toru then asked Taka to join. He seems to have pushed hard. In a September 2026 Hypebeast interview, Taka laughed about it: “He was so persistent! He came over to my place so many times.” He says he didn't really trust the people around him back then, so at first he only half listened. But Toru kept showing how much he loved the band, so Taka decided to go to a rehearsal first. His verdict: “His passion got me.”
VOA writes that drummer Tomoya officially joined in 2007. At the 2025 Nissan Stadium show (in Japanese), in the band's 20th-anniversary year, he reportedly said from the stage: “We're calling it the 20th anniversary, but it's actually been 19 years since I joined” (translated from a report by the Japanese music site Real Sound).
How Big Is ONE OK ROCK's YouTube Channel?
As of November 1, 2026, the official ONE OK ROCK channel had 5.08 million subscribers, about 2.619 billion total views, and more than 600 videos. The oldest upload still on the channel is from April 9, 2012. Music videos such as “Re:make” and “Liar” went up on the same day in the same time window, so older videos were probably uploaded in one batch.
The most-watched video is “The Beginning,” published on August 15, 2012, with about 242.99 million views as of November 1, 2026.
Second is 2013's “Clock Strikes” at about 144.86 million views, and third is the 2015 “Heartache” studio session video at about 80.46 million views. Next come 2014's “Mighty Long Fall,” 2018's “Stand Out Fit In,” and 2019's “Wasted Nights.” All of the top six, then, date from 2019 or earlier.
“The Beginning” was also performed at the final show of the tour (in Japanese) in September 2026, and Real Sound writes that moshing and crowd surfing broke out.
How Did Taka and ONE OK ROCK Learn English?
“Learn” may be too tidy a word. It looks more like a story of stumbling forward.
In a 2019 Bandwagon interview, Taka looked back: “When we went on tour for the first time in the United States, we knew no English and only could communicate through body language. It was tough, actually.” (Bandwagon's article credits a translator, so the English wording may not be Taka's own.)
Still, the band went overseas because it wanted to reach the world. As Bandwagon prints it, “ONE OK ROCK really wants to break into the world and reach fans from other countries.” In the same interview, Taka described the U.S. as “the biggest dream.”
The big turning point came in 2015. According to VOA, the band signed with Warner Brothers Records in July of that year. The album 35xxxv came out in Japanese that February. The band then recorded it again in English, and that version reached the U.S. in September. VOA says it was the band's first time recording the same music in two languages. “This is my dream,” Taka said.
VOA's article also says that English is very difficult for Taka. Even so, as he put it: “I love English ... Yeah. Sounds, like, really beautiful, for me.”
What Kind of Album Is DETOX?
DETOX is the band's 11th album (in Japanese), released on February 21, 2025. Real Sound's May 2026 article (in Japanese) introduces it as a record Taka himself openly calls “political and aggressive” (translated from the Japanese). The same 2026 article describes Taka as living in Los Angeles, and says the album's starting point was the turmoil he felt in the world while watching events like the U.S. presidential election up close.
According to Real Sound in August 2026 (in Japanese), he made a “bible” running to 40 pages before production and shared it with the staff. That's serious preparation.
Asked in an October 2025 Hypebeast interview to describe the album in three words, Taka answered: “Right and left, One, Purification.” Asked which tracks would resonate with fans in the U.S. and Europe, he singled out “Delusion:All.”
What Happened on the Tour Where Taka Broke His Foot?
The tour behind DETOX began in Mexico in April 2025, moved through South America and North America, and returned to Japan in August. The show at Nissan Stadium in Kanagawa was the band's first headline show there, and Natalie reports that about 70,000 fans turned out.
Then, during the August 31 show, Taka broke his foot. According to Real Sound, he retreated to the wings and came back in a wheelchair. Hypebeast wrote that he had “fractured a toe.”
The band kept the tour going, and guests including Koshi Inaba of B'z, TAKUYA∞ of UVERWORLD, and Takeru Satoh came out for the shows that followed. In his October 2025 Hypebeast interview, Taka said, “Sharing the stage with these artists and friends was truly a lifeline for me.” Of the Japan tour, he said it was “a trial I had to go through.”
The tour ended on September 6, 2026, at ZOZO Marine Stadium. In the rain, Taka said, “We've never been through a tour this hard before” (translated from Real Sound's Japanese report). It must have been a long road.
What Language Did Taka Speak at Taipei Dome?
Back to where we started.
The Taipei Dome shows on April 25 and 26, 2026, drew 66,000 people over two days, and according to Real Sound, they were the largest overseas shows of the band's 20-year career.
On the second day, Taka looked back, in English, on the band's first show in Taipei 14 years earlier, in a very small venue. (This is our English, taken from Real Sound's Japanese translation of his remarks, not his own wording.) That venue was Legacy Taipei, with a capacity of about 1,000. From a room of 1,000 to a dome that drew 66,000 over two days: it must have meant a lot to him.
His talk before “Delusion:All,” though, about how the band members are neither politicians nor people in power, was all in Japanese, according to Real Sound.
It was the same after “Tropical Therapy.” According to page 2 of the Real Sound report (in Japanese), Taka, who had hurt his leg or foot the day before, started speaking in English and then carried on in Japanese.
He admitted that on nights when his voice won't cooperate, and neither will his legs or feet, he sometimes turns on himself: “What on earth are you singing for?” Then came the words from the start of this article:
“Sorry for speaking in Japanese.”
He reportedly went on: “But this comes welling up from inside my heart: one of those precious, precious Japanese words, the one called ‘love,’ that goes beyond language and culture.” (His words in this passage are translated from Real Sound's Japanese report.)
In the September 2026 Hypebeast interview, Taka said, “I'm not really the type to plan out my MC speeches in advance; I just speak on the spot.” So what he said that night may not have been a prepared line. It may have come out right there in the moment.
That same day, by the way, Tomoya gave his thanks entirely in Chinese. A banner made by fans in Taiwan reportedly read “Happy 20th anniversary” in Japanese (the English here is our translation), so language seems to have traveled both ways.
When Was “Fever” Written?
“Fever” came out as a new song in October 2026, but it wasn't written recently. In the same September 2026 interview, Taka revealed that he wrote it “right in the middle of COVID-19.” Because of the title, he said, “the timing and lyrics just weren't right back then.” Concert audiences in those days had to stay completely quiet, and he “received so much backlash online for hyping up the audience,” so he held back the release.
He called the current take the finished one: “I re-recorded the vocals so many times, and now that I feel my vocal level is much better, this is the final version.”
Hypebeast reported on August 19, 2026, that A DECADE OF GREATEST HITS (2015–2025), an 18-track compilation opening with “Fever,” was set for release on October 30, and that it would be the band's first-ever worldwide vinyl release. On October 30, 2026, the band's official English site announced that the album was out.
At 4:00 p.m. JST on October 30, 2026, the official channel posted a video announcing the release of “Fever.”
There's more in motion, too. Asked about the next album in the September 2026 Hypebeast interview, Taka said, “I'm working on it.” Real Sound reported that the May shows in Hong Kong and Shanghai were canceled, and in the same interview Taka said, “I just want to go back to China and Hong Kong so bad,” adding that “the cancelled shows are my only regrets from this entire tour.”
A band that toured America knowing no English stood on a dome stage overseas in 2026, a little over 20 years after forming, apologizing for speaking Japanese while telling the crowd these were still precious Japanese words. Perhaps the strength of ONE OK ROCK lies in being able to bring both languages onstage.
