Seiko Matsuda -- Strawberry Time

Although Seiko Matsuda （松田聖子）has been in show business for about 35 years, my biggest interest in her was in the 1980s. And I split that decade into her early pre-(first) marriage period and then her return to work after getting hitched to actor Masaki Kanda and giving birth to her daughter Sayaka. The first single in that latter part of the 80s was "Strawberry Time".

"Strawberry Time" was a popular song for one certain member of the group which headed to karaoke bar Kuri during our university years. She was a huge Seiko-chan fan but it seemed as if when Matsuda came up with this comeback single in April 1987, she found her trademark tune. I had thought that when Matsuda went off the stage for a little while, she was starting to veer away from the pure aidoru stuff to a more mainstream pop sound from listening to some of her pre-marriage singles, and indeed she did go into that direction when she came back. However, this particular single brought back the good ol' days, so to speak.

Still, "Strawberry Time" has quite a bit of oomph in it when compared to her earlier Karuho Kureta-penned songs. That is probably due to the fact that the music was provided by Akio Dobashi（土橋安騎夫）, member of rock band Rebecca. The lyrics were by prolific Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）. There is that heroic rock beat about being welcomed to Seiko-chan's happy place....one wonders if an 80s anime producer would have been tempted to have created a show around the song. In any case, the single reached No. 1 on the Oricon weeklies and eventually became the 5th-ranked song for 1987. The Queen Aidoru of the 80s was back.

The single was also part of her 14th album of the same name which came out in May 1987. "Strawberry Time" the album hit No. 1 on the charts as well.