Love Psychedelico

Love Psychedelico was formed in January 1997 by vocalist Kumi and guitarist Naoki Sato, who met as members of the music club at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo.

[2] In 1997, a song they submitted to an FM radio station garnered the attention of various music executives, who began to offer them recording contracts in 1999.

[4] Love Psychedelico signed with major record label Victor Entertainment and released "Lady Madonna (Yūutsu Naru Spider)" as their debut single on April 21, 2000.

Naoki explained that it was created as a demo to recruit more band members, but the label liked it and released it largely as it was.

American cities the band has said to have enjoyed playing were Nashville, Austin, and Kumi's childhood home of San Francisco.

The group's third album, Love Psychedelico III, was released on February 25, 2004 and later certified Double Platinum for sales of 500,000.

They celebrated by releasing The Best I and The Best II compilation albums in February and holding an anniversary tour from May to July, where they were supported by Yukihiro Takahashi on drums.

[7] An Asian tour followed in November, which included a performance at the Clockenflap festival in Hong Kong and a one-man anniversary live in Taiwan.

[24] In 2024, they collaborated with Glim Spanky on the song "Ai ga Michiru Made" for their All the Greatest Dudes compilation album.

Kumi has named Janis Joplin and Sheryl Crow as influences, while Sato likes Bob Dylan.

When writing songs, Naoki first brings the guitar riffs and the duo imagine the groove and beat and "just keep jamming until we feel, 'this is it'."

[26] An identifiable trait of Love Psychedelico's music is their mix of Japanese and English lyrics and Kumi's pronunciation of them.

According to Andrew Moody, this pronunciation makes the group's songs difficult to reproduce in karaoke performances in contrast to bands such as Superfly, who have a similar stylistic approach but without the English-affected Japanese.