{"id":2198454,"date":"2026-10-14T17:56:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T14:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2198454"},"modified":"2026-10-14T17:56:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T14:56:24","slug":"yoshiki-reflects-on-music-life-legacy-his-new-collaboration-forever-love-live-with-josh-groban-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2198454","title":{"rendered":"YOSHIKI Reflects on Music, Life, Legacy & His New Collaboration \u2018Forever Love (Live)\u2019 With Josh Groban: Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Forever-Love_MAIN.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tTrending on Billboard\t\t<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tYOSHIKI and Josh Groban\u2018s collaborative recording of \u201cForever Love (Live)\u201d was released for streaming worldwide on Aug. 28. The ballad, originally released in 1996 as X JAPAN\u2018s 14th single, gets a new rendition, one born from a live performance which the two artists gave together at YOSHIKI CLASSICAL 2026 IN LOS ANGELES AT WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL \u201cVIOLET NIGHT\u201d on July 17, 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tYoshiki\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

See latest videos, charts and news<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tBillboard JAPAN sat down with YOSHIKI to talk about how the collaboration came together, the raw emotions behind the original song, his ongoing commitment to philanthropy and what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n

Could you explain what led to Josh Groban singing \u201cForever Love\u201d with you, and then to releasing the song?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI first met Josh at an event during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City in 2016, when the documentary \u201cWE ARE X\u201d premiered there. I\u2019ve spent over half my life living in LA, so when I put on YOSHIKI CLASSICAL 2026 IN LOS ANGELES<\/em>, I thought it would be good for the show to include friends that I had a personal connection with. This year is the 30th anniversary of the release of \u201cForever Love,\u201d and I had this intuitive feeling that if Josh sang it, it would turn out amazingly. I added English lyrics to the verse, making kind of a \u201cbilingual version.\u201d I wanted to create a perfect balance for listeners everywhere, easy to understand for both English listeners and Japanese listeners.<\/p>\n

When Josh came to Japan and performed at Bunkamura Orchard Hall earlier this year, on February 21, you appeared as a special guest, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tRight. I just happened to be in Japan myself at the time, and the decision for me to perform was last minute, the day before the show. We played \u201cENDLESS RAIN,\u201d and Josh sang some of the lyrics in Japanese. That\u2019s when I realized that he was good at singing in Japanese, too.<\/p>\n

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In the new release, the listener can feel the power of his singing voice and your delicate piano playing like they\u2019re right there at the show.<\/strong>Was there anything you paid special attention to in the concert to create that kind of dynamic sound for the listener?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tFirst off, I freely change up the key of my music to match different vocalists. \u201cForever Love\u201d was originally written for X JAPAN, so it was in a very high key. I lowered it by a seventh for Josh. I listened to dozens of his songs to find the right range, and I thought that this would be around the right range for him, so I suggested it to him, and he sang it in that range.<\/p>\n

What kind of emotions were you feeling when you first wrote the song, three decades ago back in 1996?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019d been living a really chaotic life. Honestly, at the time, I didn\u2019t expect I\u2019d be living for very long. I had a very pessimistic view on life, partly because of the fact that my father took his own life. I figured that one day I\u2019d just vanish somewhere. But, my music might just live on forever. That\u2019s why I named the song \u201cForever Love.\u201d I remember, when writing the song, thinking that while everyone will eventually disappear from this Earth, perhaps love was eternal. I never imagined that I\u2019d still be here, alive, thirty years later.<\/p>\n

It seems clear that you poured a lot of emotion into the song, because it\u2019s still touching people\u2019s hearts even now, three decades later.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI find the whole thing profoundly moving. On the one hand, I\u2019ll wonder to myself, \u201cHow have I managed to stay alive so long?\u201d But I feel like I\u2019ve lived because of the support everyone has given me. I feel so thankful. I think that\u2019s why the song could cross the language barriers and national borders through this performance with Josh.<\/p>\n

In addition to your music, you\u2019ve been heavily involved in philanthropic activities.<\/strong>You\u2019ve donated generously and you\u2019ve taken part in support activities to help people around the world. What are your feelings on the world today? Is there anything you\u2019d like people to do?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI think this connects to what I was talking about just now, wondering why I\u2019m still alive, but when I think \u201cWhy am I still here? Why am I alive?\u201d I\u2019ll often slip into thinking \u201cShould I even be alive?\u201d This applies to creative work, too. But then I\u2019ll think \u201cMaybe this song will help someone out there,\u201d and it really motivates me to create. I think that\u2019s why I\u2019ll have these runs of releases. I write a lot of music, and the same kind of concept applies (to my philanthropy). I feel like if what I do through my charity work helps someone, then my life has meaning. That, in turn, saves me. When I think that my existence helps others, then I feel like it\u2019s okay for me to live. Doing charity work for others saves me, in turn.<\/p>\n

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In a video interview before the concert, you said that \u201clife was a series of challenges.\u201d<\/strong>So, are you constantly taking on challenges in order to live, and in order to keep making your music?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI think my fans and my friends have given me a second or a third lease on life. I feel like if you\u2019re going to live anyway, you\u2019ve got no choice but to really live your life. For me, that covers a lot, but if I can, I want to live my life giving it full gas and really take all that life has to offer. I think the very fact that we\u2019re granted a life means that we\u2019ve got a mission to accomplish. I\u2019m not sure if life consists of finding that mission, but I want people to know that it is for everyone too, not just me. If you\u2019re going to live, you have no choice but to live your life to the fullest. I think that philosophy is part of \u201cForever Love,\u201d too.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all looking forward to what you do next.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve been writing music for years, and even now, I\u2019m writing at breakneck speeds. I\u2019ve collaborated with all kinds of artists over the past few years, crossing over genres three or four times, including pop and rock. If I try to release something to represent a culmination of all of that, I\u2019ll never end out putting it out. Instead, the approach I\u2019m trying to take is suddenly putting out a piece of music, like I did this time. And eventually making all of those individual releases come together. For example, I\u2019ve been an artist for decades, and I still find the concept of an album really important. But I\u2019ve trapped myself by that idea, and for this reason or the other I haven\u2019t been able to put out an album. It\u2019s been like that for a few years, and it\u2019s very frustrating. So I\u2019ve started feeling, quite strongly, that I need to free myself from this fixation on the concept of albums, and instead just keep putting out individual songs. I\u2019m writing all these new songs, but then I\u2019m also putting out a song that I wrote 30 years ago. But I think that\u2019s totally fine, too. For me, \u201cForever Love (Live)\u201d feels like the first breakthrough in a process of freeing myself from these preconceptions and fixations.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u2014This interview by Takayuki Okamoto first appeared on Billboard Japan<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/music\/music-news\/yoshiki-interview-forever-love-live-josh-groban-1236360769\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Forever-Love_MAIN.jpg?w=1024″] Trending on Billboard YOSHIKI and Josh Groban\u2018s collaborative recording of \u201cForever Love (Live)\u201d was released for streaming worldwide on Aug. 28. The ballad, originally released in 1996 as X JAPAN\u2018s 14th single, gets a new rendition, one born from a live performance which the two artists gave together at YOSHIKI CLASSICAL 2026 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,226],"class_list":["post-2198454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-billboard-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2198454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2198454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2198454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2198454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}