Dinosaur Jr's 1994 song "Over Your Shoulder" suddenly big in Japan

“Things are easy when you’re big in Japan,” sang German group Alphaville in 1984. Ten years later, Dinosaur Jr would release the song “Over Your Shoulder” as the closing track on their album Without a Sound. Twenty-five years after that, “Over Your Shoulder” has become the most-viewed YouTube video in Japan, racking up 8,081,572 views which, in turn, has resulted in the song entering the Billboard Japanese charts at #18 and the “Hot Overseas” chart at #1. Chart experts Billboard, who reported the news, don’t have a good explanation:

Billboard Japan attempted to figure out why Dinosaur Jr.’s song from 1994 (which bowed on the tally at No. 18) and several other non-Japanese tracks besides Queen shot up in Japan’s YouTube ranking this week within the limited time before the release of this week’s Japan Hot 100 tally, but unfortunately couldn’t get to the bottom of the mystery. The likely answer is that some unknown user uploaded a video or videos using these songs, which were then viewed enough times for the songs to make significant inroads into the ranking.

It’s a mystery, but good for J. Mascis and crew! Listen to the song below…sounds like a hit to us.

Dinosaur Jr’s most recent album is 2016’s Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not.