Seiko Matsuda -- Nobara no Etude （野ばらのエチュード）

For the past month, I've been kinda avoiding putting up any profiles of Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子） or any of the other singers who got the Xmas treatment last month since I think I did throw up quite a few songs from each of them, but now that I've passed the 25th of this month, I'm back in the safe zone again.

"Nobara no Etude"(Field Rose Etude) should come with a medical warning: May cause tendency to sigh wistfully. And yep, since it's been a REALLY long time since I heard this one, I almost blew off the screen of my netbook here. I first saw Seiko-chan perform this, her 11th single, at the 1982 Kohaku Utagassen. It was the 2nd time for me to see her perform on the annual New Year's Eve programme, and she came out wearing this yellow summery aidoru-ish frock. Unlike the previous year, when she performed "Natsu no Tobira"(already profiled) bouncing around like mad, "Nobara no Etude"was her just singing the pretty ballad like a summer breeze. The opening "Tu-ru-ri-ra, tu-ru-ri-ra..." still resonates over 30 years later.

The song was written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆） and composed by Tulip's Kazuo Zaitsu（財津和夫）, and was released back in October 1982. Despite the relatively late release, "Nobara no Etude" managed to become the 41st-ranked song of the year, and yep it did hit No. 1 on the Oricon weeklies as just about every single of hers did in the first half of the 80s. Even in 1983, it finished at the No. 75 position at the end of that year.