Mayumi Horikawa -- Daddy （ダディ）

Via her younger sister, singer-songwriter Reimy（麗美）, I learned about Mayumi Horikawa（堀川まゆみ）. Born to a Filipino father and a Japanese mother in Okinawa in 1958, she moved up to Tokyo in 1978 in the hopes of becoming a singer. However, along the way, she found herself becoming a model after being chosen as the 4th Clarion Girl to represent the Clarion car audio products and that was where Horikawa first found her fame.

Still, by the end of the year, her dream of becoming a singer came true when she debuted with the melancholy "Daddy" in November 1978. Keisuke Yamakawa（山川啓介）took care of the lyrics while Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）handled the music and arrangements. I heard it for the first time a couple of nights ago and I found it quite soothing actually. Her vocals weren't exactly the steadiest but considering that she was singing about a beloved family member, perhaps that was a good thing. In a way, it could have made for a nice theme song for a bittersweet family drama.

For her initial dream of becoming a vocalist, she only released two more singles and three albums up to 1993. On the other hand, she had far more success as a composer under the name of MAYUMI. She has created songs for singers like Kyoko Koizumi（小泉今日子）, Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）, Yuki Saito（斉藤由貴）and for her younger sister, but I know her songwriting work mostly via Miki Imai（今井美樹）. Among the songs that Horikawa has made for Imai, two of them are "Anytimes, Manytimes" from her 1989 album "Mocha" and the title track from "Lluvia" from 1991.