is a song by

Japanese rock , sometimes abbreviated to , is rock music from Japan. Influenced by American and British rock of the 1960s, the first rock bands in Japan performed what is called Group Sounds, with lyrics almost exclusively in English. Folk rock band Happy ...

band

Godiego are a Japanese rock band, consisting of keyboardist and composer Mickie Yoshino, vocalist Yukihide Takekawa, guitarist Takami Asano and Yoji Yoshizawa, bassist Steve Fox, and drummer Tommy Snyder. Over their 40-year career (with hiatuses), Go ...

, released as their 11th single. The song was used as the theme song for the 1979 film adaptation of the manga of the same name. The song was composed by Godiego vocalist

Yukihide Takekawa is a Japanese singer-songwriter from Urawa-ku, Saitama, Saitama Prefecture. He is best known for being the vocalist to the band Godiego as well as his solo career and his work as an author. Some of his compositions have been featured in video ...

and arranged by Godiego keyboardist

Mickie Yoshino Mickie Yoshino (born 13 December 1951) is a Japanese keyboard player, composer, producer, and arranger. Yoshino is known for leading the rock band Godiego. In 2005, he won a Japan Academy Prize for his music. Yoshino's compositions were used i ...

. Like many Godiego songs, it is both in Japanese and English; the English lyrics were written by Yōko Narahashi and the Japanese lyrics were written by Keisuke Yamakawa. The song reached #2 on the

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charts and was the #1 song on '' The Best Ten'' for seven weeks. To differentiate it from the theme song of the anime which has the same name in Japanese, it is often referred to by its English title which is stylized as "THE GALAXY EXPRESS 999".

Track listing

#"The Galaxy Express 999" #"Taking Off!"

Album cuts

*'' Magic Capsule'' *'' Godiego Hit Special'' *'' W Deluxe'' *'' Godiego The Best All English Songs'' *'' 15th Anniversary Godiego Box'' *'' Godiego Great Best'' (Japanese & English editions) *'' Galaxy Express 999: Eternal Edition File No.7&8'' *'' Galaxy Express 999: Song Collection''

Cover versions

Several groups and artists have covered the song since its release in 1979. It was included on

Animetal was a Japanese heavy metal band who specialized in metal covers of theme songs from classic and modern Japanese anime and tokusatsu television series. They were composed of several luminaries of the Japanese metal scene, most notably vocalist ...

's '' Animetal Marathon VI'',

Masaaki Endoh is a Japanese singer-songwriter who is prominent in the area of soundtracks for anime and tokusatsu productions. He is one of the founders of the Anison band JAM Project and has been a regular member ever since its inception in 2000. His nick ...

's '' Enson2'',

Rica Matsumoto is a Japanese actress, voice actress and singer who was born in Yokohama, Japan. Her name is also sometimes romanized as Rica Matsumoto. She was one of the founders of the anison band JAM Project. After early stage work, she began both voice a ...

's '' Manmaru'' feat.

, Animetal USA's

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, and by Exile with Verbal of

M-Flo is a Japanese hip hop group consisting of record producer DJ Taku Takahashi, Verbal and Lisa. Lisa left the group in 2002 to pursue a solo career and the remaining members then started the M-Flo Loves... project working different vocalists ...

on '' Exile Catchy Best'' in 2008. The Exile cover was digitally commercially successful, being certified by the RIAJ as being downloaded more than one million times as a ringtone, and more than 500,000 times as a full-length cellphone download. The

Sanyo Shinkansen , stylized as SANYO, is a Japanese electronics company and formerly a member of the ''Fortune'' Global 500 whose headquarters was located in Moriguchi, Osaka prefecture, Japan. Sanyo had over 230 subsidiaries and affiliates, and was founded by ...

uses two adapted covers from the song at

JR West , also referred to as , is one of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) companies and operates in western Honshu. It has its headquarters in Kita-ku, Osaka. It is listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange, is a constituent of the TOPIX Large70 index, an ...

stations as the Shinkansen arriving melody for trains running east (towards

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

) and west (towards Hakata).

References

1979 singles Anime songs Exile (Japanese band) songs Godiego songs Japanese film songs Songs written for animated films Songs written by Yukihide Takekawa Songs written by Yoko Narahashi 1979 songs {{1970s-single-stub