Noriko Watanabe -- Itsuka Dareka ga...（いつか誰かが…）

From Columbia.jp

 

It's been several years since I last put up a song by actress/singer Noriko Watanabe（渡辺典子）and that was "Hare, Tokidoki Kill Me"（晴れ、ときどき殺人）, her second single from April 1984. Looking up her file on J-Wiki, someone was kind enough to even include her history of singles sales as a bar graph, and regrettably, it was a case of diminishing returns for the Fukuoka-born Watanabe.

Although I have never done a deep dive into her discography and although her vocals were perhaps not the most inspiring, her third single from later in September, "Itsuka Dareka ga..." (Sometime Somebody) is an interestingly arranged song. With Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）handling that job, the husband-and-wife songwriting team of lyricist Yoko Aki（阿木燿子）and composer Ryudo Uzaki（宇崎竜童）who had created the second single were also on hand for this third single.

"Itsuka Dareka ga..." as the title may imply is a song of enigma as a woman may be lost from all angles, literally and/or psychologically for starters. The melody and arrangement amp that feeling up as they shape the song into something like exotic kayo or Fashion Music as if the setting were somewhere in another nation or dimension involving a spooky castle of some sort. Although there is nothing at all mentioned about it in Aki's lyrics, I was even thinking something along the lines of Halloween. 

According to that sales chart, the single managed to sell a little over 60,000 records with the Oricon ranking for it holding at No. 26. 

Well, whaddaya know? Just like the second single becoming the theme song for a suspense movie of the same name starring Watanabe, "Itsuka Dareka ga..." got hit with the same function for another cinematic adaptation of a Jiro Akagawa（赤川次郎）mystery novel, "Itsuka Dareka ga Korosareru" (いつか誰かが殺される...Sometime Somebody Will Be Killed). Once again, Watanabe is on the hook...figuratively speaking.