I guess after nikala and Marcos V. have put their contributions for the 1980s aidoru Chiemi Hori（堀ちえみ）onto the blog, it is now my time to put in my two American cents (Canadian pennies have officially not existed for a few years now).
Hori's career as an aidoru was known to me but for all that time in Japan, I only really saw her on TV as a former aidoru-turned-tarento who popped up on a lot of shows. I also know that she has a lot of kids.
Last night, I was leafing through one of the ancient "Young Song" booklets that came in every issue of the teen music magazine "Myojo" and came across Hori's song, "Yuugure Kibun" (Twilight Mood) which was her 8th single from October 1983. The songs talked about by nikala and Marcos for her were later releases and were more on the techno aidoru end of things, but "Yuugure Kibun" seems like a more conventional aidoru ballad, and the lyrics by Fuyuko Moroboshi（諸星冬子）went over well-trod ground in that it dealt with that high school kid having that major crush on a guy but not being able to follow through on her feelings.
However, I have to say that those instrumental flourishes in the intro and in the middle of "Yuugure Kibun" by the composer Shigeru Amano（天野滋）were what put this tune onto a higher level for me. So, arranger Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）also gets accolades from me. Those keyboards add some lushness that I wouldn't have associated with an 80s aidoru tune at that time, so at first, I thought that this was going to be a more serious pop song or even an AOR/City Pop piece. However, the sung portion by Hori brought things back to aidoru-dom but even so, "Yuugure Kibun" was a pleasant revelation to me.
The song reached No. 8 on Oricon and won Hori the Golden Aidoru Prize at the Japan Record Awards in 1983.
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