About SMAP's "Lion Heart"
"Lion Heart" is the 32nd single by the male idol group SMAP, released in 2000. It was produced as a medium-tempo song in line with the R&B trend of the time, which was promoted from the late 1990s to the 2000s, starting with female singers (divas) like Hikaru Utada. It achieved million-seller status in its fifth week of release, recording total sales of 1.568 million copies.
The song "Lovin' You," released in 1975 by American female singer Minnie Riperton, is considered the source material, and the melody and overall atmosphere of the song are similar. Incidentally, the late-night program "SMAP no Ganbarimashou" was broadcast in 1995, and the version of "Lovin' You" covered by British female reggae singer Janet Kay was used as the opening theme for this program.
It was used as the theme song for the Nippon TV drama "Food Fight," starring Tsuyoshi Kusanagi. The lyrics express a man's feelings for a woman, and Shinji Nojima, who was in charge of the lyrics, wrote them with the motif of "a male lion desperately protecting a female lion at the risk of his life." A demo version sung solely by Takuya Kimura was broadcast once on the TOKYO FM program "Takuya Kimura's What's UP SMAP!". It was the second million-selling single for SMAP on the Oricon charts. It was also performed at the "NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen," which marked their 10th appearance.
As an aside, it has been pointed out that the song "Everlasting Love," released in 1999 by Daichi Miura, who was a member of the mixed-gender idol group Folder belonging to Rising Production, is similar to SMAP's "Lion Heart." These two songs share the same composer (produced by Minoru Komorita), and it is believed that "Lion Heart" was an arrangement of "Everlasting Love" provided for SMAP (released about 8 months later). Interestingly, Folder's debut song "Parachuter" also had a similar musical style to SMAP's "Dynamite," and both songs were also handled by Minoru Komorita. DA PUMP, a group belonging to Rising Production that was a rival to SMAP, also released a medium-tempo song called "if..." one month after "Lion Heart" to compete, but as a result, both "Lion Heart" and "if..." became hits, so many people generally have the image of SMAP = "Lion Heart" and DA PUMP = "if...".