I (Ikimono-gakari album)
| I | ||||
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| Studio album by Ikimono-gakari | ||||
| Released | July 24, 2013 | |||
| Genre | Pop, rock | |||
| Label | Epic | |||
| Ikimono-gakari chronology | ||||
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| Singles from I | ||||
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I is the sixth studio album by Ikimono-gakari, released in Japan on July 24, 2013. It reached number one in the Oricon weekly charts for the week ending August 5 of that year making it the group's sixth consecutive number-one album. Consequently, Ikimono-gakari became the first mixed group in over seventeen years to achieve six consecutive number one albums on the Oricon weekly chart.
The album was released in Japan on July 24, 2013 in two editions. The regular edition (ESCL-4091), had for its first pressings an Ikimono card #036 and a raffle ticket for additional prizes which included a T-shirt and a hand fan. The limited edition (ESCL-4089-90) included a DVD featuring a radio interview "イッキーモンキーのiラジオ" Ikkey Monkey's iRadio, a twelve-sided panorama photo shoot of the Ikimono-gakari members and a special box packaging to display pictures of the three members.
The album contains five previously released tracks; four of which are A-side singles: "Haru Uta", "Kaze ga Fuiteiru", "1 2 3 ~Koi ga Hajimaru~" and "Egao". A fifth track, "Ashita no Sora", was the B-side to "1 2 3 ~Koi ga Hajimaru~".
Though to an extent a reference to the songwriters themselves, the title "I" is largely a reference to the fact that the band had intended the listeners to develop a personal connection with the album and to give the impression that the songs were being sung from the listener's perspective. "I" is also significant for being the most common letter of the alphabet in "Ikimonogakari" and (when pronounced phonetically) sounds not only like ai the Japanese for love but also ai the Japanese for sadness, a reference to the emotions the band hopes convey to the listeners.
Love is a common theme throughout the album, referenced frequently in "1 2 3 ~Koi ga Hajimaru~", "Koiato", "Nannde" and "Renaishousetsu". Whereas "1 2 3 ~Koi ga Hajimaru~", in keeping with previous singles such as "Kimagure Romantic" and "Natuzora Graffiti", describes the light-hearted and optimistic first love of a teenage girl, the others describe experiences of being broken hearted from various stages of adulthood, a theme which has rarely featured in recent Ikimono-gakari singles. "Ascending to the Capital" is also a common theme throughout later tracks, in particular "Tōkyō" and "Nukumori" where the theme is used as a metaphor to describe the emotions experienced by Yoshioka and Yamashita respectively in leaving their home town in Kanagawa prefecture behind to pursue a recording contract in the Japanese music industry. Various tracks hold individual references to the phonetic reading of the album title "I": "Koiato" references ai, the Japanese for meeting (often a loved one and often by chance) and "Kaze Koute Hana Yureru" refers to ai the Japanese for indigo.
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