40 Years Later, Japanese City Pop is Still Crashing the Charts (with Cat Zhang)

Switched on Pop

Vox Media Podcast Network

Music Interviews, Music History, Music, Music Commentary

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If you listen to a lot of music on YouTube, you may have been recommended a video. The thumbnail image is a striking black-and-white photo of a Japanese singer named Mariya Takeuchi. The song, “Plastic Love,” is a lush disco track with deep groove, impeccable string and horn arrangements, and a slow-burn vocal performance from Takeuchi. When the song was released in 1984, it sold 10,000 copies. Today, it’s racked up over 65 million views since its posting in 2017. How did the relatively obscure genre of Japanese City Pop, an amalgam of American soul and funk and Japanese songcraft from the 1970s and 80s, become the sound of the moment? For Pitchfork’s Cat Zhang, City Pop’s heart-on-its-sleeve emotions and slick production resonates with the nostalgic leanings of much contemporary pop. Sampled by artists like Tyler the Creator and inspiring original material from bands around the globe, City Pop has much to tell us about cultural exchange, technology, and the enduring universal power of slap bass. Songs Discussed: Miki Matsubara - Stay With Me Mariya Takeuchi - Plastic Love Makoto Matsushita - Business Man Pt 1 Tatsuro Yamashita - Marry-go-round Anri - Good Bye Boogie Dance Boredoms - Which Dooyoo Like Toshiko Yonekawa - Sōran Bushi Takeo Yamashita - Touch of Japanese Tone Mai Yamane - Tasogare Young Nudy ft Playboi Carti’s - Pissy Pamper Tatsuro Yamashita - Fragile Tyler The Creator - GONE, GONE / THANK YOU 9 Sunset Rollercoaster - Burgundy Red Check out Cat’s article The Endless Life Cycle of Japanese City Pop on Pitchfork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan and I'm songwriter Charlie
0:17.2	Harding. Charles at the end of last year, a song shot up, Spotify's viral charts to
0:26.0	number one and it's an unlikely entrant. It's got a kind of dreamy groove and a chorus
0:35.0	on half in English and half in Japanese. Let's listen to it.
0:47.6	This is strange because it sounds like a Philly record label in the 80s produced a late disco hit
0:55.5	in Japan and I don't know what that's doing on the charts. It's Miki Matsubara's Stay With Me
1:01.0	from 1979. It's an example of a city pop and to answer your question why is this Japanese genre
1:08.0	from the 70s and 80s suddenly surging in popularity in the United States and around the world,
1:14.0	we need to bring in a special guest. It's friend of the show assistant editor at Pitchfork
1:20.9	Kat Zhang who recently wrote the endless life cycle of Japanese city pop. Kat thank you so much
1:27.7	for joining us. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I feel like this won't have
1:32.2	a simple answer but can you help us understand why Japanese pop songs from the 70s and 80s are
1:39.5	suddenly all over Spotify, all over YouTube. Why is this sound suddenly in everyone's ears?
1:45.6	This most recent surge of interest in Japanese city pop music, which is music from Japan's boom era
1:55.2	where they were just flourishing. There was the second biggest economy. They were kind of living
2:00.2	a luxurious lifestyle. Music from this era became popular in TikTok because anime lovers and
2:07.7	like Japanophiles generally started using the videos and their TikToks. But it's real peak happened
2:15.0	in December because young Japanese Americans would show the songs to their moms who kind of grew
2:21.8	up with that era of music and then their moms would light up and recognition and sing along to
2:27.7	the song as if they were kind of doing karaoke and they would record the whole interaction and people
2:32.9	just got so much joy out of these moms kind of reliving their youth. So that's why it's shot up to
2:38.7	the number one of the Spotify viral charts at the end of 2020. But City Pop actually has a long
	...

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