Snow Man’s new single “STARS” — their seventh digital release and first of 2026 — sits at the intersection of Olympic spectacle and everyday resilience.
Their new digital single, “STARS,” slips into that history with a steady confidence. On the surface, it’s a tie‑in track: a theme song for TBS’s sports coverage of the Milan–Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, where it will soundtrack broadcasts from February 6 to 22. Underneath, it feels like a letter to anyone standing at the edge of a big decision, the kind of moment that can redraw a life.
“STARS” is written for thresholds. Its lyrics trace the long, uneven path that leads up to “right now”: the repetition, the swallowed frustration, the quiet fear that none of it will be enough. Instead of romanticizing the finish line, the song keeps returning to the journey that came before it, insisting that all those invisible choices still matter. The promise isn’t that everything will work out perfectly, but that the ground beneath your feet is real—that every step you’ve taken has brought you here on purpose.
That makes the timing feel especially sharp in 2026. On one side, there are the athletes who will step into arenas knowing that the entire world is watching a single performance, not the years they spent getting there. On the other, there’s Snow Man themselves, moving through their own season of change.
Late last year, it was announced that member Ren Meguro—whose smooth vocals and calm presence have become one of the group’s emotional anchors—would scale back on his Japan and group activities to take on his first major international acting role in FX’s Shogun 2. He still sings on “STARS” and appears in the music video, but knowing what’s ahead, the single lands like both a group declaration and a quiet pivot point. It’s not framed as a goodbye; it’s more like watching someone you love step onto a different starting line.
The music video leans into that idea of beginnings. Instead of centering the group in high‑concept sets or tightly framed choreography, it follows young athletes as they train, stumble, reset. Missed landings, second attempts, the small rituals of preparation—these moments become the real performance. Snow Man show up not as untouchable stars, but as guests and supporters, walking into practice spaces and competitions to cheer the athletes on. There are brief glimpses of the members in the recording studio, singing “STARS” into microphones, but the camera keeps returning to the people on the brink of their own one‑shot moments.
What the video quietly suggests, though, is that this isn’t just a story about one idol group cheering from the sidelines. The kids and students on screen are also a kind of future audience and future “stars”—people who may one day become someone else’s hero, someone others stay up late to watch. They’re young, hungry, and still learning how to live with failure, but the flame they carry is the same one Snow Man once guarded through their own long trainee years. “STARS” frames that exchange of energy as something bigger than fandom: a small, stubborn belief that people can keep lifting one another up, passing courage forward like a relay baton from one generation to the next.
On paper, it’s a classic Olympic tie‑up: a popular group, an uplifting melody, a chorus built for stadium speakers and TV montages. But if you scroll down from the MV itself, another layer of the song emerges. Under the video, thousands of comments stack up—fans and non‑fans, teenagers and grandparents, people watching from hospital beds, classrooms, break rooms, commuter trains. Read together, they feel like a second music video made entirely of real lives.
There are students everywhere. Middle schoolers and high schoolers facing entrance exams talk about playing “STARS” the night before tests or on the way to the exam hall, clutching at the idea that all the effort they’ve already poured into their studies still counts. University students preparing for national exams in nursing, education, and public service say the same thing: that hearing “It’s okay, just go as you are” takes the edge off a kind of fear they don’t always know how to name.
Working adults line the comments too—company employees starting over after career changes, people balancing childcare and long shifts, applicants studying for civil service or certification exams after hours. Many admit they’re not doing anything as visibly dramatic as an Olympic performance; they’re simply trying to show up for their own lives. For them, the song’s central message doesn’t shrink in scale. It simply moves indoors.
And then there are the people who insist they’re “just ordinary”—just office workers, just students, just tired adults trying to make it through another week—before describing lives full of grief, responsibility, and stubborn hope. Taken together, the comments sketch a crowd that looks nothing like a single demographic. Different ages, different countries, different circumstances, all stopping under the same song for a moment.
Threaded through these stories is one recurring image: nine figures who don’t stand above listeners so much as alongside them. Many describe Snow Man as heroes, but not in the distant, untouchable sense. They talk about a group that has known both rewarded and unrewarded effort, a group whose own long, uneven climb gives weight to every time they sing.
“STARS” also carries an unmistakable subtext about togetherness. In the MV’s final moments, nine small snowmen appear—one for each member—a quiet reminder that even when their paths diverge, the group is still imagined as a whole. Fans latch onto that detail, writing about how reassuring it is to see those nine shapes lined up, especially knowing that, for a while, the members won’t always be in the same place physically. The image sits neatly beside how you can interpret the title: even when stars drift apart in the sky, they’re still part of the same constellation.
Within STARTO’s broader Olympic push—which also sees songs from SixTONES and Kento Nakajima—Snow Man’s “STARS” takes a slightly different route. Instead of painting victory as glittering destiny, it zooms in on the ordinary courage behind big moments. Viewers notice that the kids and student athletes in the MV aren’t flawless prodigies; they fall, miss shots, cry, get back up. People recognize themselves in those stumbles, whether their arena is a hospital ward, a classroom, a recruitment exam, or a quiet late‑night study session.
Snow Man stand in the middle of all of this, not as distant idols but as catalysts. The group that once sang about crossing a sea of tears is now sending a new kind of message: that your efforts, visible or not, have brought you somewhere real. That even if your big moment is “just” an interview, a test, a small stage, or the first day of a new job, it still matters. That in a comment section full of strangers, you can discover you’re not the only one who’s scared—and not the only one deciding to try anyway.
“STARS” will echo throughout the 2026 Winter Olympics broadcasts, stitched between jumps, races, and medal ceremonies. But its true legacy might be quieter: a late‑night click on a YouTube thumbnail, a pair of headphones on a commuter train, a hospital room where someone presses play and feels, for a few minutes, a little less alone.
The Olympics will eventually end. The arenas will empty, the banners will come down. Somewhere, though, a kid will still be studying, a future star still practicing, a patient will still be recovering, a worker will still be dragging themselves through another shift. And somewhere in the background, nine voices will still be singing the same invitation—to trust the path you’ve walked, to take the next step in your own way, to remember that even a single, trembling moment can shine like a star.
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