Masaharu Fukuyama -- Ikiteru Ikiteku（生きてる生きてく）

 

When I was about to hear this song by singer-songwriter and actor Masaharu Fukuyama（福山雅治）, I had been expecting another wholesome pop/rock ballad. Instead, I got the lad acting mildly goofy for the camera and singing a Beatles-like melody in a slightly affected nasal voice. In fact, I was wondering whether Fukuyama was trying to emulate Keisuke Kuwata（桑田佳祐）of the Southern All Stars（サザンオールスターズ）.

"Ikiteru Ikiteku" (Alive and Living) was Fukuyama's 28th single from March 2012, and as it turns out, there was a method to his madness in that the song was his contribution as a theme song to the "Doraemon"（ドラえもん）animated feature "Eiga Doraemon Nobita to Kiseki no Shima 〜Animal Adventure〜"（映画ドラえもん のび太と奇跡の島 〜アニマル アドベンチャー〜...Doraemon the Movie: Nobita and the Island of Miracles ~Animal Adventure~）which came out in the same month. According to the J-Wiki article for the song, Fukuyama had wanted to provide something upbeat that the kids could sing with a bit of ska. Sure enough, the singer was trying to go for Beatles music, and I'm thinking specifically of "Ob‐La‐Di, Ob‐La‐Da". As for the nasal quality, he recorded "Ikiteru Ikiteku" as if Bob Dylan was trying to sing it. Fukuyama wrote and composed it while he and Akira Inoue（井上鑑）arranged everything.

The song was another No. 1 hit for Fukuyama and it finished 2012 as the 38th-ranked single. It also ended up as a track on his 11th studio album "Human" from April 2014 which also hit No. 1 and became the 7th-ranked album of the year.