Make Believe Mailer 37: '80s Canon (Record Collector Magazine's "Best 100 City Pop Songs Of The 1980s")
I buy too many magazines
This spring, you can go to Uniqlo in Japan and buy a t-shirt featuring art done by Hiroshi Nagai. The Weeknd sampled “Midnight Pretenders.” City Pop Sushi in Cleveland remains operating, with Tatsuro Yamashita mural proudly displayed.
We are living through the peak days of city pop visibility on a global scale. What started beyond Asia as niche music nerd territory turned into internet coolness morphed into algorithmically generated interest mutated into (sigh) aesthetic before settling into one of the defining (and accidental) Japanese soft power exports of the 21st century. The final manifestation of this won’t come until a pop star takes a “city pop” sound to the top of the Hot 100 — or, I don’t know, Taco Bell makes a Super Bowl ad that looks like a Dorian video, fill in whatever sign of cultural dominance you want here — but it’s about as ever-present as it has gotten outside of Bubble Era Tokyo.
Why this has happened has been explored plenty — obligatory link to Cat Zhang’s feature on city pop at Pitchfork — and by now I think you could easily sweep through YouTube recommendations, playlists called like “balmy bubble nights: japanese city pop / funk 1980s,” TikTok tags and Light In The Attic compilations to construct a “global city pop” canon, or at least an “online city pop” canon.
But what would that list look like in Japan…where city pop comes from?
Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love,” #1 On My Hypothetical “Online City Pop” Canon List / #2 City Pop Song Of The ‘80s According To Record Collectors Magazine
The biggest difference to understanding city pop in Japan as opposed to how it has been received in the social media age outside of the country is that city pop never vanished. Even after its ‘80s heyday, artists associated with the term remained in the spotlight, whether they were persistent superstars like Mariya Takeuchi or Tatsuro Yamashita (who has a super popular weekly radio show, by the way), or because they changed their styles to reflect burgeoning trends, like Pizzicato Five. The phenomenon of creators engaging with city pop and Bubbly imagery despite barely or not at all experiencing them first hand isn’t a new development either, with people like Hitomitoi, Toki Asako and “Mr. CITY POP” Kaseki Cider among others.1 There’s definitely a recent “revival” attempt made by major labels to bring the sounds of the city to the kids of today, but that’s just marketing. If anything, Tower Records vinyl section holds more sway, bringing the past to the present.
City pop isn’t so much a sound to be discovered as much as a style to dive into in Japan, and one that spreads across all genres. That’s the message in Record Collector magazine’s July 2020 issue, devoted to a “Best 100” city pop songs list focused exclusively on the 1980s. It arrived at a moment where global interest in city pop — and, maybe more tellingly, the realization from people in Japan that, hey, these old songs are being gobbled up abroad — was shooting up. The Japanese publishing industry doesn’t lack in books, magazines and hybrid “mooks” about city pop — Record Collectors had already put out a guide to the scene as a whole a year prior, along with a messier 1970s top 100 offering — but this installment tried to distill the most important period of “city pop” down to a canon, right when it had the most ears on it.
The end result is part confirmation of who the major players in the sound were — Yamashita! Takeuchi! Hiroshi Sato! — and part reminder that city pop wasn’t a sonic island, but rather a corner of Japanese music interacting with everything around it (i.e. nobody in English is going from “city pop sure is neat” to “Seiko Matsuda, what an artist,” but she’s here despite her status as the eternal pop idol in the market). This list — compiled by experts, many of whom actually experienced those economic boom times — offers a glance at how city pop is remembered and embraced in Japan, offering another angle on a period that has become globally present, and especially underlines who defines the style in the country.
Record Collector Magazine’s Best 100 City Pop Songs Of The 1980s List (Originally Published In July 2020, Links When Available)
Tatsuro Yamashita, “Sparkle,” #1 Of The 1980s
Tatsuro Yamashita “Sparkle”
Mariya Takeuchi “Plastic Love”
Taeko Onuki “Shikisai Toshi”
Minako Yoshida “Hoho Ni Yoru No Akari”
Eiichi Ohtaki “Kimiwa Tennenshoku”
Minako Yoshida “Town”
Yuming “Shinju No Pierce”
Tatsuro Yamashita “Ride On Time”
Tatsuro Yamashita “Doyobi No Koibito”
Kazuhito Murata “I-pon No Ongaku”
Akira Terao, “Ruby No Yubi,” #11 Of The 1980s
Akira Terao, “Ruby No Yubi”
Junichi Inagaki “Natsu No Klaxon”
Yuming “Yokoso Kagayaku Jikan E”
Hiroshi Sato “I Can’t Wait”
Eiichi Ohtaki “Canary Islands Nite”
Niagara Triangle “A Men De Koi Wo Shite”
Akira Terao “Shadow City”
Yoshiyuki Ohsawa “Soshite Boku Wa Toho Ni Kureru”
Kato Kazuhiko “Ano Goro, Marie Laurencin”
Southern All-Stars “Emanon”
EPO, “Doyobi No Yoru Wa Paradise,” #29 Of The 1980s
Yoshitaka Minami “Slow Na Boogie Ni Shitekure”
Kato Kazuhiko “Yasashi Yoru No Sugoshi Kata”
Eiichi Ohtaki “Ame No Wednesday”
Eiichi Ohtaki “Koisuru Karen”2
Tatsuro Yamashita “Amaku Kiken Na Kaori”
Tatsuro Yamashita “Loveland, Island”
Pizzicato Five “Kore Wa Koi De Wa Nai”
Kazuhito Murata “Denwa Shitemo”
Kato Kazuhiko “New York Confidential”
Seiko Matsuda, “Miami Gozen Goji,” #35 Of The 1980s
Motoharu Sano “Young Bloods”
Hiroshi Sato “Say Goodbye”3
Yuming “Tower Side Memory”
Toshiki Kadomatsu “No End Summer”
Seiko Matsuda “Miami Gozen Goji”
Kiyotaka Sugiyama & Omega Tribe “Summer Suspicion”
Tatsuro Yamashita “Atarashii Tokyo Rhapsody”
Junko Ohashi “Telephone Number”
Tatsuro Yamashita “My Sugar Babe”
Eiichi Ohtaki “Peppermint Blue”
Yellow Magic Orchestra, “Kimi Ni, Mune Kyun,” #41 Of The 1980s
Yellow Magic Orchestra “Kimi Ni, Mune Kyun”
Char “ALL AROUND ME”
EPO “Park Ave. 1981”
Motoharu Sano “Complication Shakedown”
Bread & Butter “Cruising On”
Takako Mamiya “Love Trip”
Toshiki Kadomatsu “OFF SHORE”
Makoto Matsushita “Sunset”
Yuming “Koibito Ga Santa Claus”
Taeko Onuki “Peter Rabbit To Watashi”
Toshiki Kadomatsu, “Take You To The Sky High,” #54 Of The 1980s
Motoharu Sano “Someday”
Tatsuro Yamashita “Itsuka”
Yasuyuki Okamura “Super Girl”
Toshiki Kadomatsu “Take You To The Sky High”
EPO “Down Town”
Mariya Takeuchi “Koi No Arashi”
Yukihiro Takahashi “Drip Dry Eyes”
Eikichi Yazawa “Yes My Love”
Ginji Ito “Ame No Stella”
Mariya Takeuchi “Fushigi Na Peach Pie”
1986 Omega Tribe, “Kimi Wa 1000%,” #65 Of The 1980s
Rajie “Goodbye Transfer”
Taeko Onuki “Kuro No Claire”
Tatsuro Yamashita “Music Book”
Yoshitaka Minami “Akogareno Radio Girl”
1986 Omega Tribe “Kimi Wa 1000%”
The Beatniks “Chotto Tsurainda”
Anri “Windy Summer”
Takako Mamiya “Mayonaka No Joke”
Momoko Kikuchi “Glass No Sogen”
Motoharu Sano “Sugartime”
Haruko Kuwana, “Down Town,” #79 Of The 1980s
Kaoru Sudo “Anata Dake I Love You”
Akiko Yano “Ramen Tabetai”
Pizzicato Five “Mina Waratta”
Tatsuro Yamashita “Get Back In Love”
Toshiki Kadomatsu “Tokyo Tower”
Masayuki Suzuki “Misty Mauve”
Yoshino Fujimaru “Who Are You”
Yurie Kokubu “Snob Na Yoru E”
Haruko Kuwana “Down Town”
Hiroko Yakushimaru “Tantei Monogatari”
Mari Iijima, “Blueberry Jam,” #85 Of The 1980s
Akiko Yano “David”
SANDii “Drip Dry Eyes”
EPO “Ongaku No Yona Kaze”
Tatsuro Yamashita “Kaze No Corridor”
Mari Iijima “Blueberry Jam”
Moonriders “G.o.a.P”
Yasuhiro Abe “Irene”
Yoshitaka Minami “Crescent Night”
Seiko Matsuda “Kazetachinu”
Hi-Fi Set “Sunao Ni Naritai”
Meiko Nakahara, “Fantasy,” #99 Of The 1980s
Yasuha “Flyday Chinatown”
Yuming “Yusuzumi”
Kenji Sawada “Senaka Made 45 Bun”
Mariya Takeuchi “Sweetest Music”
Kyoko Endo “Giniro No Natsu”
Rats & Star “T-shirt Ni Kuchibeni”4
Yosui Inoue “Riverside Hotel”
Akiko Yano “Harusakikobeni”
Meiko Nakahara “Fantasy”
Akira Inoue “Bartok No Kage”
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
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“Karen” used to be a name conveying coolness
Sorry to editorialize, but this clearly should be in the top ten
Something else Japanese lists are willing to wrangle with…the 1980s history of blackface artists. Even the glitziest sounds can’t hide a group like Rats & Star
Slowly going through this list, thanks for posting!