TMG's Jack Blades and Eric Martin Visit Best Hit USA on October 15 — With a Night Ranger Song in the Set

October 15, 23:30: TMG are the Star of the Week

This is episode 1166 of Best Hit USA on BS Asahi, broadcast from 23:30 to 24:00 on Thursday, October 15, 2026. The programme's own listing for the coming week names TMG as its Star of the Week, with Jack Blades and Eric Martin appearing in the studio.

Introducing the group, which the broadcaster describes as led by B'z guitarist Tak Matsumoto, the listing says the pair came in during a busy stretch, having released their first album in two years and being out on tour, and that they talk about what TMG means to them. Only those two are named: the listing says nothing about Tak Matsumoto or Matt Sorum appearing.

The song with Ado is the title track of an album released the day before

The song the listing calls "the one with Ado as featured vocalist" is SAYONARA (feat. Ado), the title track of TMG III SAYONARA, the group's third album, out on Vermillion Records on October 14. The album runs to six songs, and the broadcast falls the day after it reaches the shops.

Ado's appearance follows from an earlier connection: Tak Matsumoto wrote and gave her DIGNITY in 2023. In an interview in the November 2026 issue of BURRN!, Tak Matsumoto says the tour name SAYONARA came first, that he decided a song of the same name was needed and began the album with it, and that he mixed Japanese and English in the words because Ado's involvement was already settled. He wrote the Japanese lyric of the chorus; Jack Blades wrote the verses and the bridge.

The song is also the October 2026 closing theme of Hiruobi on TBS. This site covered that and the BURRN! cover story in a feature on October 5.

An older Night Ranger song, from Jack Blades's other band

The listing also promises an older Night Ranger song, picked out because of Jack Blades. Which song it will be is not stated ahead of the broadcast.

Jack Blades, born on April 24, 1954 in Palm Desert, California, is a bassist and singer. In Night Ranger, formed in San Francisco, he has been half of a two-singer front line — his rock voice set against Kelly Keagy's ballad voice — in a band built around two guitarists of very different styles, Brad Gillis and Jeff Watson. Four in the Morning (I Can't Take Anymore), sung by Jack Blades, reached No. 19 in the United States, and Goodbye reached No. 17.

He left the band in 1989 to form Damn Yankees with Tommy Shaw of Styx, Ted Nugent and Michael Cartellone, returned to Night Ranger in 1996, and still plays bass and sings there. He brings that American hard-rock voice and bass straight into TMG.

On the day of the broadcast, TMG are in Osaka

The tour the listing refers to is TMG LIVE 2026 "SAYONARA": nine shows in five cities, opening at Zepp Haneda (Tokyo) on October 5 and 6, then Zepp Sapporo on the 9th, Zepp Osaka Bayside on the 13th and 14th, Zepp Fukuoka on the 17th, Zepp Nagoya on the 20th and 21st, and finishing at Tokyo Garden Theater on the 23rd. The broadcast on the 15th falls between the Osaka nights and the Fukuoka one.

On that same October 15, TMG appear at MASA ITO's TALKING COLOSSEUM BATTLE OF ROCK at Osaka Tenmangu Shrine. The programme goes out at 23:30 that night.

TMG's 2026 line-up, as the official site lists it, is Tak Matsumoto on guitar, Jack Blades on bass and vocals, Eric Martin on vocals, Matt Sorum on drums and Yukihide "YT" Takiyama on guitar. The official site raises the possibility that the 2026 tour is TMG's last, though Tak Matsumoto told BURRN! in the same November issue that no one in the band has talked about ending it.

A programme that began in 1981, still presented by Katsuya Kobayashi

Best Hit USA began on TV Asahi in 1981 and has been broadcast by BS Asahi since 2003; the programme calls itself the last international-music show on Japanese television. Katsuya Kobayashi has presented it, as personality and VJ, from the first broadcast to the present.

It goes out every Thursday from 23:30 to 24:00, built around the Star of the Week, the Hot Menu slot and the current chart. Episode 1165, on October 8, gave the Star of the Week slot to Prince and Neil Young.