Mayumi Shinozuka -- Taiyo no Kakera（太陽のかけら）

Mayumi Shinozuka（篠塚満由美）...a name that I've read through the past few years doing this blog but only as a lyricist, apparently for a lot of aidoru according to her J-Wiki profile. She's been represented here, too, in creating songs for Iyo Matsumoto（松本伊代）and Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）.

However, she did start out as a singer herself when she made the most of her chances on the NTV show "Star wa Tanjo!"（スター誕生!...A Star is Born!）in 1974. Starting her career with her name written in hiragana（しのづかまゆみ）, after her first few singles, she took a year to belong to a band Mommy & Oldies Family Band（マミー&オールディーズファミリーバンド）in 1977 before going back to the hiragana name for one single, and then finally reverting to her kanji name for the last few singles going into the 1980s.

That final single released in July 1981 was "Taiyo no Kakera" (Shards of the Sun). Written by Shinozuka and composed by Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）of the band NASA, that certain guitar riff at the beginning and end of the song had me first thinking whether this would be a City Pop (or an ELO) tune, but the rest of "Taiyo no Kakera" basically had me feeling that this had more of that 50s rock n' roll sound that had been popular at the time through acts such as The Checkers（チェッカーズ）and The Venus. The arrangement was handled by Akira Inoue（井上鑑）, and the song actually comes across as something that would have been ideal for the early Akina-chan.

Speaking of the past, Shinozuka's vocals reminded me to a certain degree of The Peanuts（ザ・ピーナッツ）, and in fact, although the singer never got any hits, she has become famous as an impressionist of other singers such as Kye Eunsook（桂銀淑）and one of The Peanuts.