Theoretically Speaking, S4:E7:

What Makes City Pop,City Pop? 

I didn’t intend to write about city pop.

Heck, I didn’t even know it existed until last week.

I was researching something else, stumbled on city pop, and got interested. If you know more about it than I do, which is definitely possible, please fill me in, down in the comment section.

In the 1920s, American jazz records arrived in Japan.

A little thing called World War II brought a halt to jazz and jazz clubs. The Imperial Army insisted on it. They didn’t like anything American.

Japan lost the war, of course, and was occupied by the Allies. There were plenty of U.S. soldiers stationed there and the military-run radio stations of the Far East Network played lots of Western music, and not just jazz. They played swing, blues, country, and even Caribbean music.

The stations were meant to entertain the troops but anyone with a radio could listen to them. Many Japanese people developed a taste for western music. They started bands and would perform Western music for the U.S. troops. The occupation officially ended in 1952 but the musical influence of the West didn’t.

Much of this is surprising because Japan had a history of indifference to outside cultural influences.

That might have been because Japan is an island nation, separated from the rest of the world. Maybe having the soldiers living among them made a difference. Knowing people as individuals rather than faceless groups tends to wash away barriers.

Most of these cover pop songs were sung in English. The musicians did this partially to stay true to the original song, but also because of the difference between English and Japanese. 

In English, a single syllable can be stretched over multiple notes without changing the word’s meaning. Japanese considers a syllable’s length as part of its meaning. The same sound held slightly longer can be another word entirely. The only difference in pronouncing the words “tsuki” and “tsūki” is the length of the U sound.

A cover of Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” by Kosaka Kazuya And The Wagon Masters was very popular. Some of its lyrics are English and some are Japanese.

But as more people bought radios and, importantly, televisions, cover pop faded because people were more interested in hearing and seeing original artists. It’s possible, however, that cover pop led to karaoke.

Even during the cover pop years, some songwriters and artists tried to mix Eastern and Western music, with varying success.

The best known, here in the States anyway, is 1963’s “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto.

Japan went from the devastating loss of WWII, including two atomic bombs and other horrors, to having one of the best standards of living on the planet, and in only a few decades. We can attribute at least part of this to its demilitarization following the war. Armies are expensive, and without one, Japan put its money into rebuilding and technological R&D.

They built and sold cars, appliances, and more. By the mid 70s, the Japanese economy was strong and still growing, and by the end of the 80s, some Americans openly worried that Japan would buy all our real estate.

If the United States was worried about this friendly takeover, it sure didn’t stop us from buying Walkmen.

In August, 1970, a band called Happy End released their first album. All the lyrics were in Japanese and this caused some controversy. Can it be considered rock if it’s not in English? Is rock in Japanese sustainable or is this one album a fluke?

The band Sugar Babe (not to be confused with the 90s English girl group, The Sugarbabes) came slightly later and also sang in Japanese. They and Happy End share a soft rock sound with touches of jazz, like a less dark Steely Dan. This early to mid 70s style leads us straight to city pop.

City pop’s tone is glossy and chill.

While Japan exported lots of cool gadgets, they imported musical influences. Disco, funk, new wave, quiet storm, synthpop, jazz, and more were all getting mixed into what came to be known as city pop. Like the smooth jazz of the 80s, it can be background music but is intricate and sophisticated enough to be foreground music.

That makes it perfect music for the late 70s and all of the 80s. Japan’s economy was the envy of the world. And to the average Japanese person, there was no end in sight. The soundtrack for these years was city pop.

Tatsuro Yamashita had been in Sugar Babe and released his fifth solo album in 1980.

It’s cleanly recorded soft rock with a four on the floor beat and syncopated horns. It’s the song that made city pop mainstream. No wonder Yamashita has been called the “King Of City Pop.”

Yamashita was the biggest star of city pop, not only as a performer but as a producer and songwriter. He collaborated with many other artists in both Japan and the U.S., including Alan O’Day of ”Undercover Angel” fame, who wrote English lyrics for Yamashita’s music.

Naturally, he produced her records when she started writing again, and they’ve continued working together since. Unlike many showbiz marriages, they’re still together.

In 1984, she released a comeback album called “Variety.” It was her first album where she wrote all its songs, and it went to #1. In fact, every studio album she’s released since has hit #1.

One single from “Variety” performed disappointingly. At first.

Her song “Plastic Love” peaked at #86 and was on the chart for only two weeks. It was the least successful of the album’s three singles and the third worst performing of her career to date. 

That is, until the internet went crazy.

In 2017, someone called Plastic Lover uploaded an eight minute unofficial remix of “Plastic Love.” The video is just a still photo of Takauchi from a 1980 photo shoot when she was 25. 

Some sort of agreement was reached in 2018, and the full remix remains on YouTube. A year later, Takeuchi made an official video of the original album version. She’s not in it, but it’s at 23 million views and climbing. This is the video I’ll include in the Suggesting Listening list below.

City pop reflects Japan’s opinion of itself in the 1980s: successful, strong, unstoppable.

The album covers and videos show clean, beautiful cities full of architectural excellence and neon colors. These are the colors you know from anime and early video games. The songs about living in world class cities rosily paint Japan as technologically advanced and an economic superpower. This utopia would last forever.

Of course, it all came crashing down.

The bubble burst in 1990. Japan’s economy went into the “Great Recession” and the 90s are known as the “Lost Decade.” Just like that, city pop was done.

Japan had been city pop’s only market because record labels thought, probably correctly, that Japanese lyrics wouldn’t sell anywhere else.

The recession broke the illusion of perfect cities and unending prosperity. No one in Japan was in the mood for city pop anymore, and the rest of the world didn’t know about it in the first place. City pop was over.

A new subgenre called Shibuya-Kei started.

Shibuya-Kei was electronic and sampled or took cues from city pop, bossa nova, trip hop, the Madchester scene, and more. It was more than a little kitschy and was at once retro and futuristic.

It morphed into the vaporwave and future-funk genres of today. Their popularity may have something to do with the revival of not just “Plastic Love,” but city pop in general. Vaporwave and future funk came before the reboot of “Plastic Love,” but people are now discovering all three genres for the first time through “Plastic Love.”

This time around, the interest in city pop seems to be mostly outside of Japan.

Artists like the South Korean-based Night Tempo, the American DJ Yung Bae, and Macross 82-99 from Mexico are taking the smooth grooves of city pop and retrofitting them for the early 2020s. 

City pop is brand new to most of us.

For us foreigners, it’s soft rock we haven’t heard before, smooth jazz with a little more verve, and disco without the “disco sucks” baggage.

We may or may not think of our cities to be great. But we can have nostalgia for a time when they were – without ever having been there.

Turn on the neon lights.

And let’s dance on the sidewalks in the rain.

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Suggested Listening – Full YouTube Playlist

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