Artist · chart history
Pizzicato Five
Band Tokyo Japan Active 1984–2001
Pizzicato Five formed in 1984 in Tokyo, Japan and was active until 2001. Pizzicato Five has 2 chart appearances on 2 radio countdowns from 1 station on RockLists, spanning 1995–1999. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Twiggy Twiggy/Twiggy Vs James Bond”, which appears on 1 list with a best position of #393. The station that charted Pizzicato Five most often is Q101 (Chicago, IL), with 2 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1995.
Pizzicato Five were Tokyo pop at its most dapper, a band that treated the whole history of pop as a dressing-up box. Multi-instrumentalists Yasuharu Konishi and Keitarō Takanami started it, first as a quintet, with Takao Tajima among those passing through, but after the lineup shuffled in the late '80s the group that conquered the world was a duo: Konishi and singer Maki Nomiya.
The sound is pure cocktail-hour sorcery, swinging vintage pop, jazz and synth-pop sliced up and sewn back together with a wink, and it put them at the very heart of the Shibuya-kei scene of the '90s. They worked at a furious clip, turning out a studio album nearly every year plus EPs and remix sets, and labels from Nippon Columbia to Sony Music Entertainment Japan to Matador carried the torch. "Twiggy Twiggy", all mod-girl bounce, sums up the whole giddy aesthetic in a few minutes flat.
Their music turned up all over movies, TV and video games; the English version of their 1991 song "Baby Love Child" even landed in the Futurama episode "Leela's Homeworld". They called it a day in 2001.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Pizzicato Five on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Twiggy Twiggy/Twiggy Vs James Bond | 1 | #393 | – | – | |
| 2 | Twiggy Twiggy | 1 | #87 | – | 1995 |
Every countdown appearance
| Year | # | Song | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 393 | Twiggy Twiggy/Twiggy Vs James Bond | Q101 Top 1,011 Songs of All-Time (December 1999) |
| 1995 | 87 | Twiggy Twiggy | Q101 Top 101 Songs of 1995 |
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