【Japan Today】Namie Amuro’s ‘Hero’ selected as NHK’s Rio Olympics theme song

Japan’s national broadcaster NHK has announced that its official broadcast song for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and Paralympic Games will be “Hero,” performed by popular Okinawan singer Namie Amuro.

The still unreleased song, which was specifically created for NHK’s coverage of the Olympics, will be an inspirational tune, serving as a “human anthem to cheer the athletes,” NHK said. It will be first streamed during the channel’s All Japan Gymnastics Championships live broadcast on April 3.

NHK representatives explained that they appointed the singer for her “powerful voice that can deeply move people’s hearts” and “her popularity among different generations,” Sankei Shimbun reported.

In a statement released to the media, Amuro, 38, said that she is “extremely honored to perform a song for the Olympic and Paralympic games, a dream happening only once in four years.”

“I will perform this song from the bottom of my heart, cheering the athletes competing at the Rio games,” she said.

Past NHK official Olympic and Paralympic theme songs include Yuzu’s “Eiko no Kakehashi” for the 2004 Athens Games, and Ikimonogakari’s “Kaze ga fuiteiru” for the 2012 London Olympics.