City Pop

About

City Pop is a genre of music popular in Japan in the late 70s and 80s blending pop, jazz, and funk to create a pristine-sounding style of music meant to reflect the booming economic and technological prosperity taking place in Japan in the time period. The genre saw a resurgence in popularity in the 2010s thanks to its popularity in the Vaporwave community and several songs which gained millions of views on YouTube thanks to frequently appearing in the "recommended" sections below other videos.

History

The beginning of the "City Pop" era isn't precisely defined, but early artists said to help define the sound include Mari Sugi and Happy End.^[2] Early songs to later take on the tag include Taeko Ohnuki's "4 AM," released in 1978 on her LP, Migionne (shown below, left). Blog ZZ Sounds^[1] marked the 1980 release of Tatsuro Yamashita's "Ride on Time" (shown below, right) as the start of the "City Pop Era."

Yamashita remained one of the most popular artists in the genre throughout the genre's history, along with his wife Mariya Takeuchi. Other popular City Pop artists from this time period include Miki Matsubara, Junko Ohashi, Anri, and Akira Terao (examples shown below).^[3] The genre fell out of favor in Japan when the Japanese asset price bubble burst in 1990.

2010s Resurgence

Use in Vaporwave

City Pop began seeing a resurgence in popularity in the 2010s after songs began being used as samples in the Vaporwave community, particularly in the future-funk subgenre.^[5] For example, one of artist Saint Pepsi's most popular tracks, 2013's "Skylar Spence," sampled Tatsuro Yamashita's "Love Talkin"^[4] (shown below, left). Artist マクロス MACROSS 82-99 often sampled City Pop artists in his music, such as his song "New Dawn," which also samples Yamashita.^[6]

"Plastic Love"

"Plastic Love" is a 1984 J-pop song performed by Japanese singer/songwriter Mariya Takeuchi (竹内 まりや). She and the song later became popular online when the song resurfaced on YouTube. The song was released on her comeback album VARIETY, released April 25th, 1984, and reached #86 on the Oricon charts when it was released as a single.

The song was posted on YouTube by user Sona main, but the video was later taken down. User Plastic Lover reuploaded a seven minute version of the song on July 5th, 2017, featuring a picture of Takeuchi from her "Sweetest Music / Morning Glory" single cover. The video has gained more than 5.33 million views as of January 2018.

The song has surged in popularity online. Before its initial removal, the video was posted on the /r/listentothis subreddit on June 21st, 2017 with 3937 upvotes (as of January 2018). It's also a popular source for future funk, a subgenre of Vaporwave, remixes. On March 11th, 2016, music channel Artzie Music released a remix of the song by future funk artist Night Tempo, garnering over 2.4 million views. Another remix by TARA was uploaded by Funky Panda on September 8th, 2016, gaining 76,000 views.

Takeuchi has also garnered significant attention online, along with fan art from sites such as DeviantArt and Tumblr. Threads about Takeuchi and specifically "Plastic Love" often appear on 4chan's /mu/ board.

The song's popularity has led to several videos analyzing both the phenomenon surrounding the popularity and the song itself. For example, YouTuber SteveM's July 29th, 2018 analysis of the song's popularity gained over 200,000 views in a little over one week (shown below, left). Zen Huxtable's musical analysis of the song, posted the following day, gained over 35,000 views (shown below, right).

"Telephone Number"

"Telephone Number" is a song by Junko Ohashi which was parodied online. Many of the parodies use the chorus of the song, which features Ohashi singing "Awoo, 56709!" to reference the Awoo~ meme from Touhou Project. In August 1981, Junko Ohashi released the song "Telephone Number" as part of the album Tea For Tears. On December 28th, 2016, YouTuber Professor Poulsard uploaded the track, gaining over 1.4 million views (shown below).

On May 3rd, 2017, YouTuber Slime Spawn uploaded a video remix of the song using a GIF and images of Momiji Inubashiri from the "Awoo~" meme, gaining over 391,000 views (shown below, left).

Yubin

In the spring of 2018, K-pop star Yubin, who rose to fame as part of the girl group Wonder Girls, released her solo debut which may be seen as a direct homage of City Pop. The music video for her debut single "Lady" features much of the 80s iconography associated with the genre (shown below). It has gained over 4 million views. The b-side for the single, titled "City Love," was cancelled due to reportedly sharing too many musical similarities to "Plastic Love."^[7]

Search Interest

External References