City Pop's Global Revival
- Mina O
- Jul 9
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 4
It’s 1986 in Tokyo. Discos flash with neon lights, the newest car coast parade between skyscrapers, and department stores bustle with shoppers decked out in designer clothing. It’s the Bubble Era of Japan (roughly 1986 to 1991), a time of excess and city dreams. Even if you weren’t there, just listen to Misty Mauve and you’ll feel a strange nostalgia for a moment you never lived.
A BRIEF HISTORY
City Pop can be loosely defined as Japan’s fusion of Western soft rock, funk, R&B, and jazz. It began taking shape in the late 70s, but became mainstream in the early 80s as the nation’s economy soared. The genre came to represent a prosperous, city-centric lifestyle fueled by booming real estate, stock prices, and consumer culture. With its smooth production, jazzy chord progressions, and themes of romance, leisure, and city life, City Pop was the perfect soundtrack for this era.
City Pop’s roots trace back to folk-rock band Happy End (1969 to 1972). Their sound drew from American folk rock, but their lyrics had a distinctly Japanese urban melancholy, referencing Tokyo’s changing cityscapes, urban loneliness, and postwar identity shifts. This became a blueprint for City Pop’s metropolitan-focused storytelling. After disbanding, members like Eiichi Ohtaki and Haruomi Hosono continued to pioneer City Pop. Ohtaki’s 1981 solo masterpiece, A Long Vacation, became one of the genre’s most defining works. Its glistening melodies paired perfectly with Hiroshi Nagai’s iconic cover art of dreamy skies and empty resort pools.
Artists like Tatsuro Yamashita (Ride on Time), Mariya Takeuchi (Plastic Love), and Anri (Windy Summer) sang about love, freedom, and indulgence through imagery of romantic summer nights, convertible drives along the coast, and the thrill of Tokyo’s nightlife. These lyrical themes mirrored the aspirations of a generation living (or dreaming of living) in an urban utopia, and were complemented by Nagai’s vibrant and dreamlike surrealism artwork, whose style became a signature City Pop aesthetic.
A GLOBAL REVIVAL
Fast forward three decades to the mid-2010s, where an unauthorized YouTube upload of Takeuchi’s 1984 Plastic Love went viral worldwide, reaching over 63 million views, aided by algorithmic recommendations and a thriving lo-fi playlist culture (The original video was taken down due to copyright issues and an official music video has taken its place.) Shortly after in 2020, Miki Matsubara’s 1980 Stay With Me resurfaced through a global TikTok trend that prompted nostalgic singalongs from Japanese parents who lived their youth dancing in discos of Tokyo, sparking curiosity from younger generations.
But before City Pop gained widespread global recognition, underground internet movements like Vaporwave and Future Funk (both heavily sampling City Pop) introduced its bright sound to global audiences. Vaporwave emerged in the early 2010s as a slowed-down, nostalgic collage of 80s and 90s sounds (including City Pop) and Future Funk took those same sampled melodies and infused them with uptempo beats.
This prelude paved the way for mainstream artists to create successful hits borrowing from City Pop’s unique nostalgia. The Weekend’s Out of Time (sampling Tomoko Aran’s Midnight Pretenders, now streamed over 550 million times on Spotify) channels City Pop’s bittersweet, late-night energy.
Jenevieve’s breakout Baby Powder (streamed over 120 million times) shapes Anri’s Last Summer Whisper into a sultry, modern groove.
Even Tyler, The Creator borrowed Tatsuro Yamashita’s Fragile for his 2019 track GONE, GONE / THANK YOU. Other acts like Indonesian band Ikkubaru and Korean DJ Night Tempo openly cite City Pop as a key influence, with the latter remixing 1980s Japanese hits for new audiences.
In the mash-up world, UK-Japanese producer Dan Tanda paid homage to two musical pioneers with his acclaimed fan project MF DOOM × Tatsuro Yamashita (2018). The 6-track EP uniquely blends MF DOOM’s intricate rhyme schemes with Yamashita’s smooth production, allowing City Pop’s lush arrangements to transform into soulful backdrops for hip-hop. Initially released on Bandcamp, the project gained an underground cult status and eventually saw a limited vinyl pressing in 2024, further cementing City Pop’s appeal to a new generation.
CITY POP, TODAY & TOMORROW
City Pop’s mix of global familiarity and local uniqueness makes it both fresh and timeless: rich production influenced by Western soft rock, funk, and R&B, infused with Japanese retro nostalgia. Even 40 years later, Midnight Pretenders’ late-night regret and melancholy resonate in The Weeknd’s own storytelling of loneliness. Visually, the Bubble Era’s bold colors and utopian optimism, captured in Nagai’s art and Tokyo’s neon glow, add to the sense of longing.
For today’s audiences, City Pop is like a familiar yet foreign, comforting yet melancholic dream. Its enduring appeal suggests nostalgia has as much value as novelty. It’s a cultural time capsule and blueprint for cross-cultural collaboration—one whose sounds and aesthetics continue to inspire, evolve, and thrive in a global context.
☆BONUS☆
Tatsuro Yamashita’s Christmas Eve wasn’t initially groundbreaking when it dropped in 1983, but railway company JR East began to use it in their “Xmas Express” commercials, and it became a nation-wide hit.
These ads showed long-distance lovers rushing to reunite at train stations—a perfect match for Yamashita’s bittersweet lyrics about loneliness and hope. Each year, a new ad aired, and Christmas Eve climbed the charts, eventually becoming one of Japan’s definitive holiday songs.
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