1. Introduction: Why City Pop now?
| Text: mmr | Theme: 1980s Japanese urban pop “city pop” has been rediscovered by the YouTube generation and overseas DJs.The nightscape of the city and the sounds that reflect nostalgia are now a cultural phenomenon that resonates around the world. |
At the end of the 1980s, the term ``city pop’’ seemed to have ceased to exist in the Japanese music world. However, in the 2020s, this genre is making waves on streaming charts around the world.“Plastic Love” has been played tens of millions of times on YouTube, and playlists such as “Tokyo Night Drive” and “Japanese City Pop” consistently remain at the top of Spotify. This phenomenon is not just nostalgia.Behind this rediscovery led by chance by an algorithm lies a universal desire for music that coexists with urban sophistication and nostalgia.
For young listeners overseas, these sounds are a symbol of ``retro-future.’‘Neon lights, the pavement after the rain, the warmth of analog recordings - they see the romance of the future in the “foreign past” that cannot be found in their own country’s music. DJ Night Tempo said, “This music is nostalgia for the future.”In other words, rather than consuming the past, we are accepting Japan’s 1980s as an “alternative future.”
2. Defining City Pop: Urban Soundscapes
``City Pop’’ is a cultural device that converts urban scenes into sounds. Its musicality is multi-layered.AOR, soul, funk, jazz, disco - based on Western black music, they combined Japanese melodic beauty and poetry.Tatsuro Yamashita’s precise vocal harmony, Mariya Takeuchi’s sweet yet heartrending melody, and Eiichi Otaki’s structured production.All of them functioned as a “Japanese redefinition of pop.”
The themes of this music are summarized in motifs such as love, nightlife, loneliness, and movement.Even though it is set in a city, there is a certain feeling of being left behind. It was a ``private landscape painting’’ depicting the richness and emptiness brought about by rapid economic growth as a personal feeling.That’s why it resonates with modern overseas listeners.This is because, in a time of urbanization and digitalization, they too face the same loneliness.
3. Historical background: high economic growth and the cassette era
From the late 1970s to the 1980s, Japanese society rapidly achieved affluence. Home appliances, cars, fashion, and music symbolized the “urban lifestyle.” Sony’s Walkman (1979) ushered in a revolution in ``carrying music with you,’’ and City Pop became the ideal soundtrack.
FM stations open one after another, and DJs play the latest hits in English.The chord progression evokes the winds of the American West Coast, and is associated with images of cities such as Tokyo, Yokohama, and Kobe. It can be said that listeners at the time were expressing themselves ``living in the city’’ through city pop. During this period, Japan’s recording technology reached the highest level in the world, and the sound quality of records was extremely high.It was a time when the city really resonated both acoustically and socially.
4. Musical characteristics: chords, grooves, recording aesthetics
The heart of city pop lies in harmonic sophistication and rhythmic flexibility. The chord progression uses Major 7 and 9th frequently, creating a floating feeling.The melancholy moment of the unexpected shift in Diminish invites the listener to the “night city.” Although the rhythm is AOR-like, it absorbs the disco and soul trends of the time, and is characterized by a light groove of around 110 BPM.
In terms of recording, the aesthetics of space'' created by the analog equipment and skilled engineers of the time shines.
The studio's reverb processing and precision EQ achieved both transparency and humidity.
In particular, Tatsuro Yamashita'sSPACY’’ (1978) is handed down as a monumental work that elevated the artistry of studio recording to its ultimate limit.
The perfection of this sound is one of the reasons why it was “discovered” overseas more than 40 years later.
5. Consumption and forgetting: silence since the 90s
In the 1990s, the collapse of the bubble economy fundamentally changed the values of music. The city lost its luster, and city pop was considered “old-fashioned” and “frivolous.” What emerged in its place was ``more individualistic self-expression’’ music such as J-Pop, visual kei, and hip-hop.
However, a different trend was brewing underground.DJs were rediscovering 1980s Japanese music as a rare groove in club culture. Compilations were created by DJ MURO, DJ Nori, Gilles Peterson, and others, and record buyers around the world sought out the Japanese version. In other words, city pop did not completely die, but continued to live quietly in the ``bottom of memory’’.
6. Starting point of reappraisal: YouTube and the “Plastic Love” phenomenon
In 2017, a video was quietly posted on YouTube. “Plastic Love” by Mariya Takeuchi.A simple post with an image of a record and a thumbnail of a pale woman’s profile. But the video was fed an algorithm and racked up tens of millions of views within a few years.
Why did it spread? First, YouTube’s automatic recommendations created an “aural chain” that accidentally reached the ears of overseas listeners. Secondly, its melancholic sound had an affinity with Vaporwave and Lo-fi Hip Hop. Third, the comment section functioned as an international “nostalgia community.”
In this way, “Plastic Love” became an icon of the digital age. Although they don’t know anything about the 80s, they share the “memory texture” of this song through data.
7. Foreign DJ’s perspective: From listening to the dance floor
DJs everywhere brought City Pop to clubs: France, South Korea, London, LA. Night Tempo, Yung Bae, Macross 82-99 are some of the most iconic. They sampled and reimagined city pop, creating a new genre called “Future Funk.”
This music is not just nostalgic, but a fusion of the brightness of the 80s and a modern tempo. For DJs, city pop is a ``comfortable danceable tempo’’ of 110 to 115 BPM. It has perfect sound quality as sampling material.
When illuminated by the club’s lights, the sounds of Mariya Takeuchi and Toshio Kadomatsu resonate like modern dance tunes.
It was a new experience of dancing the future with the past'' rather thanreenacting the past.’’
8. Connection with Vaporwave/Lo-fi HipHop culture
Vaporwave culture, which originated on the Internet, is essential when discussing the reappraisal of city pop. This genre combines digital noise and nostalgia by cutting and pasting past advertising music and Japanese samples. As a result, Japanese culture from the 1980s was repurposed as an “anonymous future.”
Similarly, Lo-fi Hip Hop is connected to YouTube’s BGM culture and spread as “Japanese 80s vibes.” A snippet of city pop played as background music for studying has been played hundreds of millions of times. In other words, the context of the music has been completely deconstructed, and Japanese pop music has become a material for global emotions. Herein lies the essence of ``digital nostalgia,’’ which goes beyond cultural translation.
9. Influence on contemporary artists
In Japan in the 2020s, a new generation is emerging that has inherited the DNA of city pop. That lineage includes not only Suchmos, Lucky Tapes, cero, and Nulbarich, but also young artists like iri, Taichi Mukai, and Vaundy. They reconstruct the chords and grooves of the 1980s in a modern way, and depict the ``emotions of living in the city’’ in a new language.
Overseas, artists such as Khruangbin, Men I Trust, and Crumb are consciously incorporating “Japanese Aesthetic.” According to Spotify data, City Pop listening increased particularly in the United States, Brazil, South Korea, and France. In other words, this genre has transformed from being a “local Japanese culture” to a “post-global emotional sharing device.”
10. Conclusion: An era in which nostalgia becomes an export product
The music that the Japanese once created as a city dream'' is now resonating with people on the other side of the world 40 years later.
This is not just nostalgia, but a reversal in whichthe past becomes the future.’’
Images generated by AI, cities on the Metaverse, NFT art–all are extensions of City Pop.
Music is both a mirror of the times and a device for empathy that transcends the times.
City pop is loved around the world because its sound does not recreate the past'' butdreams of a lost future.’’
The city night is beginning to light up again in the ears of the world.
Chronology: Genealogy of city pop rediscovery
Illustrated: Structure of City Pop Rediscovery
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