Mariya Takeuchi is the queen of City Pop, having released some of the genres most defining songs and tracks, and even to this day, even over 25 years since City Pop was mainstream continues to dictate the genre with her iconic voice and style. She is, however, now the face of City Pop, and her beautiful vocals have helped define City Pop and the past and continue to define what City Pop is too this day. While she may not have been one of the founding artists of the genre such as the band “Happy End” or the renowned artist Tatsuro Yamashita. A whole new generation of people who had not lived through the initial rise of the peppy and gaudy genre and its subsequent fall.Ĭombined with the increasing love for retro and vintage aesthetics and sounds in today’s world, love and want for a time when City Pop represented the optimism, hope, and joy that many people wish they could feel today.įurthermore, with the popularity of modern sample-based, retro aesthetic genres such as Future Funk and Vapour Wave, it is no wonder why the genre had a resurgence as it did, especially among the young people of today. A whole new generation of people who had never heard of City Pop and its cultural beginnings. A whole new generation of people, young, trendy, and ready to experience something new. This event kicked off what could be seen as a revival of City Pop. Not that I’m complaining however, this song was my gateway into the genre, and for that, I am ever grateful to its beautifully sweet melancholy lyrics, and soft-subtle tones of love. For whatever reason, the Youtube algorithm pushed the track onto anyone, and everyone’s recommended feeds, and the song proceeded to explode in popularity. In mid-2017, a video of City Pop queen Takeuchi Mariya song entitled “Plastic Love” was uploaded. It was not until in the latter half of the 2010s that a new City Pop craze lit, and interest within the genre reignited in the genre. The mature lyrics, polished melodies, and sophisticated eloquent sounds lost.
City Pop was slowly and steadily forgotten, its sweet, joyful melodies speaking of love and hope were lost to the passage of time as it slowly faded into history as another of the many lost genres of pop. The genre that defined optimism for a decade and a half prior was no longer needed. Times were getting rougher, money was tighter, and hopes diminished. A style that, along with Japan’s prosperity in the early 1990s, was lost to the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble as people lost hope and joy. Music journalist Yutaka Kimura described the genre as “urban pop music for those with urban lifestyles,” a once thought everlasting soundtrack for the once thought eternal economic rise of Japan. City Pop was the pop music of the late 1970s and 1980s that complemented the optimism, joy, and fun that Japan was riding high on. A feel-good, exciting flavour of funk, pop, disco, and soul blended into some smooth, jazzy Japanese vocals. A genre that defined a generation of Japan’s urban population. It was this optimism that birthed the gaudy, poppy, peppy, and funky genre of City Pop, シティーポップ, shitī poppu. Disposable income was at a high and spending lavishly, and in excess on clothes, liquor, food, art, and travel was becoming the norm of the metropolitan Japanese public. Sony Walkman, Cassette Tapes, VHS, Video Games, Automobiles, Radio, TV, Infrastructure and Buildings, Japan, was being pushed ahead of the pack due to its economic and technological boom.Ī rapidly urbanising and westernising population was eager to spend they were euphoric and wanting to celebrate. American influence was at an all-time high, instead of the military, money funneled into technology. Born within the boom of late 1970’s Japan, after shaking off the devastation and disease of WW2, Japan was experiencing a technological and economic renaissance.