Slightly sheepish about this, but I've almost made a horrible mistake and was going to go end the year without acknowledging the fact that 80s aidoru Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）is celebrating her 40th anniversary in show business. Officially according to her J-Wiki file, she started her career in 1979 but her first single, "Hadashi no Kisetsu"（裸足の季節）didn't come out until April 1980.
I was given the reminder of this important point in her timeline via an NHK special that apparently aired in the summer but wasn't shown on TV Japan until tonight; in fact, I finished watching it less than 15 minutes ago. The special went over her career with a lot of footage of her aidoru days and then the switch into straight pop along with interviews with her and some of her songwriters such as Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）, Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and Kazuo Zaitsu（財津和夫）. I also found out that her contribution to this year's Kohaku Utagassen will be an updated version of "Ruriiro no Chikyuu" （瑠璃色の地球）.
Another Seiko song that I got to hear for the first time tonight is "Seychelles no Yuuhi" (Seychelles Sunset), a track from her 7th original album "Utopia"（ユートピア）released in June 1983. Written by Matsumoto and composed by the late Masaaki Omura（大村雅朗）, I got to hear part of it during the career montage and immediately enjoyed the light & mellow sound in there with what I think is the fluegelhorn, the waves crashing quietly on the shore, and just the general AOR love in there. Plus, there is the way that Seiko-chan pronounces her "oh" that makes it completely Seiko.
"Utopia" was another one of her No. 1 albums and "Seychelles no Yuuhi" shares album space with other tunes that I've covered such as "Tengoku no Kiss"（天国のキッス）.
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