Seiko Matsuda -- Pink no Mozart （ピンクのモーツァルト）

Well, I just wrote about "Ame no Oto wa Chopin no Shirabe"（雨の音はショパンの調べ）, so I decided to bring up another 80s oldie with a title containing a classical music reference. Unlike Asami Kobayashi's（小林麻美） classic cover of "I Love Chopin", though, Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）"Pink no Mozart"（ピンクのモーツァルト）is about as light and fluffy as cotton candy on a breezy day.

Written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composed by Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）,  I was wondering if the latter guy had a big puffy white wig on his head while seated behind an old piano when he was writing down the notes for Seiko-chan's 18th single. The song does sound a bit like something that would have been written by a composer of that era (not necessarily Amadeus himself) if he'd been asked to create an aidoru tune. Reading through the lyrics, though, Seiko is actually singing about a wonderful day at the beach using Mozart and all of the images associated with him as an analogy.

Released in August 1984, it hit the top spot on Oricon and would become the 17th-ranked song for the year. It also won a Gold Prize at the Japan Record Awards. My first encounter with "Pink no Mozart", though, was as a track on her 10th album, "Windy Shadow" which came out in December of that year. I bought the album at Wah Yueh back in the late 80s....to be honest, although I didn't know any of the tracks by title, the thing that had me parting with my money was the cover picture of her looking unusually happy and kinda tarty.