The Firsts, The Second (Female Singers) or Happy 1000th Article for 2021!

 

I was fairly confident that we would reach the big G by the end of the year but I just hadn't realized that it would be attained even before the middle of December. But indeed, for the first time in "Kayo Kyoku Plus" history, thanks to everyone who has helped out over the past 12 months, the blog has reached one thousand articles. We were able to reach 100 articles within a month this year and now it's 1000 within 2021! Again, let me thank all those contributors with their wonderful articles such as Noelle Tham, Marcos V., Joana Bernardo, Oliver Ebisuno92, HRLE92 and T-cat along with commenters with their suggestions including Brian, Jim, J. Noah and Scott, and of course all of the readers over the past decade. If I've forgotten anyone, my apologies in advance.

Seeing that this milestone would be reached, I had been wondering what would the thousandth article cover. Would it be one of the veterans such as Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）or Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）? Would it be one of the relative newbies in the 21st century? Or does it even matter? Just go with the flow for flow's sake, so to speak.

Well, I decided to kill two birds with one stone...or as they say in Japanese: isseki nicho（一石二鳥）. You see, I'd been musing about doing an Author's Pick over the Holidays based on that project known as The First that some of us contributors helped out on. We all put down what our first songs that got us into Japanese pop music were. Naturally, I put down mine in the summer of 2017, but then I got a little itchy again for that topic last year, and so just before the year went out, I contributed a sequel, "The Firsts", based on what were some of my first songs by genre.

Now, I'm writing down yet another sequel with a typically J-Canuck daffy title of "The Firsts, The Second" which will summarize what my first songs based right down to the individual beloved singer. And well, since there are so many of them, I've had to divide them into men and women. For today then, I will remind folks about some of my favourite female artists and the songs that I heard from them first.

Yumi Matsutoya -- Dandelion ~ Osozaki no Tanpopo （ダンデライオン〜遅咲きのたんぽぽ）

Junko Yagami -- Mizuiro no Ame (みずいろの雨）

Mariya Takeuchi -- September

Junko Ohashi -- Silhouette Romance（シルエット・ロマンス）

Hiromi Iwasaki -- Sumire Iro no Namida （すみれ色の涙）

Akina Nakamori -- Kinku （禁区）

Mariko Takahashi -- See You Again...Kaze ni Kuchitsukete （SEE YOU AGAIN ・・・風にくちづけて...Kiss The Wind）

I should be working on the male singer version sometime later but certainly before New Year's Eve.