Give Me Five!

"Give Me Five!" (stylized as "GIVE ME FIVE!") is the 25th single by the Japanese girl idol group AKB48. It is also AKB48's fifth sakura-themed single, and their first single of 2012. This single was released in Japan on February 15, 2012.

Give Me Five! is AKB48's fifth sakura-themed single. However, unlike the previous ones, this single's title doesn't contain the word sakura.

The music video for the song Give Me Five! is a 34-minute Japanese television drama-like style video. This video was directed by Shigemichi Sugita, and it stars AKB48 members Atsuko Maeda, Yuko Oshima, Yuki Kashiwagi, Minami Takahashi. Actor Takanori Jinnai also stars in the music video.

Give Me Five sold approximately 967,000 copies on its debut day, thus making it AKB48's 12th single to achieve No.1 on the Oricon charts.

Production

Give Me Five!

Give Me Five! was sung by a band called Baby Blossom comprising 18 selected members from AKB48 and its sister groups SKE48 and NMB48. The band is led by Atsuko Maeda, who is playing the rhythm guitar, and Yuko Oshima, who is playing a bass guitar. Other members of the band include Minami Takahashi, who is playing the lead guitar, Yuki Kashiwagi, who is in charge of the drums, Mayu Watanabe, who is playing the keyboard, Haruna Kojima, who is on the synthesizer, Rino Sashihara and Minami Minegishi, who are playing the trombones, Rena Matsui and Yui Yokoyama, who are playing the trumpets, Jurina Matsui, who is playing the standing drums, Mariko Shinoda, who plays the tambourine, and Tomomi Itano, who is playing the shaker.Sae Miyazawa, Rie Kitahara, Aki Takajō, Tomomi Kasai and Sayaka Yamamoto are the band's chorus.

AKB48

AKB48 (pronounced A.K.B. Forty-eight) is a Japanese idol girl group named after the Akihabara (Akiba for short) area in Tokyo, where the group's theater is located, and its original roster of 48 members. As of December 2015, the group has expanded to include more than 130 members aged from their early teens to their mid-20s. AKB48's producer, Yasushi Akimoto, wanted to form a girl group with its own theater (unlike pop groups performing occasional concerts and seen on television) and performing daily so fans could always see them live. This "idols you can meet" concept includes teams which can rotate performances and perform simultaneously at several events and "handshake" events, where fans can meet group members. Akimoto has expanded the AKB48 concept to several sister groups in Japan, China and Indonesia.

The group is one of the highest-earning musical performers in Japan, with 2013 sales of over $128 million, and has been characterized as a social phenomenon.As of December 2015 the group has sold over 41 million records, including over 36 million singles and over 5 millon albums. AKB48 is the highest selling musical act in Japan in terms of singles sold and the highest by a girl group. AKB48's twenty-nine latest singles have topped the Oricon Weekly Singles Chart, with a record twenty-three singles selling over a million copies; their highest selling single, "Sayonara Crawl", sold over 1.95 million in 2013. In 2010 "Beginner" and "Heavy Rotation" placed first and second, respectively, on the list of Japan's best-selling singles for the year. In all consecutive years since then, AKB48's singles have occupied the top four or five spots of the Oricon Yearly Singles Chart.