SMAP -- Makeru na Baby! ~ Never Give Up（負けるなBaby! 〜Never give up）

Yup, that's good ol' SMAP in the good ol' days when Katsuyuki Mori（森且行）made the aidoru group a sextet instead of the quintet.

My overall impression of member Shingo Katori（香取慎吾）was that he was the comical one of SMAP in comparison to the smoldering heartthrob Takuya Kimura（木村拓哉）and the shy guy Goro Inagaki（稲垣吾郎）. Well, since the group broke up at the end of 2016, he's revealed a new side: introspective artist!

This morning on NHK's "News Watch at 9", there was a short feature with Katori presenting his exhibition of art including paintings and sculpture. From what I saw, he looks like he's going for some abstract works.

It has been a while since I featured a SMAP song and since I have been playing catch-up where their discography is concerned, I went back into the vaults of J-Wiki and found their 4th single, "Makeru na Baby! ~ Never Give Up" (Don't Give Up Baby!) from July 1992.

Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）was responsible for creating the music for "Makeru na Baby!" and even though he is represented on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with 149 articles (including this one), I still marvel at how prolific the man has been, especially after writing about another one of his creations just yesterday, the very different Mood Kayo "Hoshi no Night Club"（星のナイト・クラブ）for Sachiko Nishida（西田佐知子）all the way back in 1969. Takeshi Aida（相田毅）wrote the lyrics about a guy exhorting a female friend or a girlfriend to not let any obstacle or failure get in the way of success. I thought that this was a theme song for some TV drama but actually it was the theme for a 1994 movie titled "Shoot!"（シュート!）starring SMAP, dramatized from the original manga.

I'm happy that the video above shows the lyrics since while I was just listening to "Makeru na Baby!", I swore that I heard the lines "Buy my cellphone!...Catch my cellphone!". I didn't think that cellphones had made their debut quite that early and sure enough, the actual lyrics are "By myself Wow...Catch Myself...". At first listen, I had assumed that the guy was really desperate to get rid of his device.

For an early song, "Makeru na Baby!" didn't do too badly, peaking at No. 5. But according to J-Wiki, as of 2017, it has remained SMAP's least successful single, selling only a little over 90,000 copies. Happily, though, SMAP never did give up here.

Looks like Katori has made an auspicious start. Maybe someday, he and his works will work their way over to the Art Gallery of Ontario. Yayoi Kusama's（草間彌生）exhibition was a huge hit with residents here so why not Katori?