Aki Saotome -- Monaco no O-Hime-sama（モナコのお姫様）

Thanks to Wikimedia Commons

I remember one of my friends who once went on business to Monaco, of all places. As a quick geography lesson, Monaco is the second-smallest sovereign territory in the world (just next to the Vatican) but it is also one of the wealthiest countries. Whenever I think of the place, my mind goes to car racing, casinos and lots of tuxedos and evening gowns. My friend was frankly bewildered by the opulence especially when he found himself within the Monte Carlo district. That's something I can relate to completely; if I were there, I would probably be sweating a ton in my plebeian clothes and feebly asking where the nearest McDonalds is located.

Well, maybe we can all take a tour of the place vicariously via J Utah's driving video through Monaco. I do have to say that it does look glorious out there. I wonder if the state has a dress code along with a postal one.

Musing about Monaco did leave me wondering whether there was ever some sort of kayo kyoku based on the country. I imagined that it would be an exotic kayo from the late 1970s to join Mayo Shouno's（庄野真代）"Tonde Istanbul"（飛んでイスタンブール）and Saki Kubota's（久保田早紀）"Ihojin"（異邦人）. Strangely enough though, I couldn't find anything from that era and it took me a fair while before I finally found one song which had been created a few decades later.

There's absolutely no information on the singer Aki Saotome（早乙女あき）except for the fact that she released a single in 2012 titled "Monaco no O-Hime-sama" (Princess of Monaco). It was written by Hiroko Iwakiri（岩切浩子）and composed by Kazuya Jun（順一弥）, and it's quite the jazzy Mood Kayo, reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s with Yujiro Ishihara（石原裕次郎）behind the mike. However, it is the breathy and fragile vocals of Saotome here and that swinging jazz is perhaps reflective of the titular surroundings with clinking glasses of champagne and spinning roulette wheels. No mention of the legendary Princess Grace of Monaco in the lyrics, though. 

For a few minutes though, considering the paucity of data on Saotome and the names involved that I had never seen before, I had even allowed the possibility that I encountered my first example of an AI Mood Kayo song, but then that production year of 2012 cropped up. And so, I figured that Ms. Saotome is a flesh-and-blood human being who recorded "Monaco no O-Hime-sama". I just find it a tad eerie though that there is absolutely no other information on the lady, unless she's just a regular person who recorded it on a lark and then decided that it would be a one-and-done for any professional singing career. But it is a pretty refined tune.