The Sabukaru guide to City Pop's hidden gems
First an inkling of nostalgia, and then City Pop.
Love or hate the internet, you’ve got to appreciate its ability to bring back from the dead a super specific sub-genre of Japanese pop-rock from the 80s and make it a cultural mainstay more than 30 years after its heyday. Clouded by obscurity well into the 2010s, with its knowledge limited to esoteric music circles, most often DJs and producers looking for a funk beat to flip, the re-emergence of City pop as a culturally significant genre can be linked to the origins and widespread [internet] notoriety of vaporwave and its sub-sub-[sub?]-genre future funk, which borrowed heavily from pre 2000s Japanese audio and visual media.
It starts with one AMV [*Anime Music Video] for an incredibly catchy future funk number, next thing you know, you’re listening to playlist after playlist of City Pop compilations on YouTube and each new song you hear sounds better than the last. It’s a sound unlike any other, and it’s transporting you to an abundant, thriving, neon future, yet oddly warm and comforting 80s Japan. Bittersweet melancholia, a celebration of youth, love both gained and lost all set to jazz inspired funk rock, R&B, pop synths, City pop is a soundtrack of Japanese-American romanticism.
Somewhere between soft rock, funk rock, pop rock, piano ballads, soul and blues - certified jammy tunes very characteristic of a universally agreed upon better time. You’re physically here, but as you listen to 10th complication, you’ve lived a whole other life in your memories of a time that never existed for you. In another life you’re out with your mates, driving through city lights to the guitar-funk pop anthems like Tatsuro Yamashita’s Misty Mauve and Kingo Hamada’s Machi no Dorufin blasting on the radio, you’re in clubs at the end of the night, closing time singing along to Taeko Ohnuki’s 4 AM and Mariya Takeuchi’s Plastic Love in classic pop ballad fashion.
City pop compilation playlists on YouTube are a good place for beginners to start off, and each playlist reflects this almost primal urge for the comforting embrace of an 80s Japan soundscape - you’ve got pure groove, melancholic synths, high energy surfer rock -City Pop is no monolith after all. Most playlists tend to just scratch the surface, often doing a good job of compiling the most notable of songs into hour long playlists and tend to feature collections more or less similar to each other.
We know of Tatsuro Yamashita, Taeko Ohnuki, Anri, Mariya Takeuchi, Junko Yagami, and many more, with some of the best stuff in terms of City pop - if we’re looking at City pop as purely high energy funk-rock. But there’s more, so much more to listen to, and this list is a good place to start (I think), if you want to go on and explore the more slept upon side of City Pop.
Our Connection, Ayumi Ishida and Tin Pan Alley
Chronologically, Our Connection can be considered as among the earliest of music produced with a distinct City pop feel to them, with this fact further highlighted by album sounding sonically somewhere between rock and roll inspired and an overall funk-jazz fusion feel.
Furthermore, Ishida’s vocals lend nicely to the slight rock twang that accompanies the funky instrumentals present on the album, especially on the opener Watakushijishin, Dancing and Winter Concert, while funky Hitori Tabi is very much a precursor for many later City pop hit singles. Taking into account the powerhouse of musicians on this album - Yamashita, Hosono, Minako Yoshida, Shigeru Suzuki and Hiroshi Sato, it's almost criminal how underrated the album is.
Reflections, Akira Terao
Its tropical, snazzy, 80's rock with subtle moments of AOR sprinkled all over the album - Terao’s Reflections is an album that grows on you the more you listen to it. Starting off with the tropical Habana Express, Terao’s distinctly groovy vocals catch you off guard, setting your body into swing, and then over the the course of the next 50 minutes transforms into a rock experience especially on the slow ballad Niki Monogatari and the funky City pop-esque Yokisenudekigoto and Dial M, ending with the prog-rock slow burner Shukkou Sasurai. As City pop albums go, Reflections may be more rock and tropical than funk, but is definitely is an album you can return to over and over.
Awakening, Hiroshi Sato featuring Wendy Matthews
Jazz fusion that one comment on YouTube describes as “eating chocolate”, Awakening doesn’t need more than the first listen to realise that the comment holds up. Jazzy synth pop, the album opens with the ambient Awakening which blends into the suave You’re My Baby and sets us up for 45 minutes of pure slow electro-jazz fusion smoothness.
Featuring vocals from session singer Wendy Matthews, whose vocals lend the album a distinct soul feeling on Only a Love Affair, I Can’t Wait and It isn’t Easy, each with a hint of soul groove. Sato’s vocals, specifically the vocoder and electronic effects gives the album that extra oomph, that just doesn’t miss. The closing Say Goodbye is an electro-funk treat to listen to, and the only way to bring to an end this electro-funk gem of an album.
Vitamin E.P.O, EPO
EPO’s something of a City pop legend, and this album definitely shows why - Vitamin E.P.O screams playful vibrant City pop at you from the very get go, with each subsequent pop-soul jam blending into the other leaving us with 42 minutes of pure pop. Funk-soul at it’s finest, each song, bar the ballad Would You Dance With Me?, the melancholic power funk ballad Kanashii Tomodachi and the piano ballad Gofun okure de mikaketa hito e, finds you moving your body to the beat of the drums, especially on Doyou no Yoru wa Paradise and Pay Day. With brilliant production, instrumentals that transport you to a smooth yet funky 80’s, and vocals that come through crystal clear, Vitamin E.P.O is a definite City pop must listen.
AB’S-3, AB’S
Very disco, very 80's pop-funk rock that you find yourself dancing along to, AB’S-3 has a special something in it, an extra oomph that keeps you moving along to every beat. Frontman Fujimaru’s session band forgoes it’s prog-rock undertones from the first AB’S for a completely new, completely danceable, perfectly jammy pop-funk sound that transports you to right into the 80's.
By the End of the Century is funk masterpiece, C.I.A. places you directly on the dance floor - spinning lights overhead, you’re unbeatable, living in the moment on a stellar night out. Cry Baby Blues oozes City pop surfer rock goodness while Sequence Life has that quintessential 80's synth pop ballad feel to it, a spacey, melancholic ballad that is a perfect conclusion to the absolute main character in the 80's energy this entire album exudes.
Never Ending Summer, S.Kiyotaka & Omega Tribe
Never Ending Summer is a powerful album and perhaps some of the best synth-pop/rock that City pop has to offer. The wailing rock riffs, the packed drums, groovy disco funk synths and Sugiyama’s brilliant vocal performance all coming together as a solid 80s soundtrack is an experience to listen to. Misty Night Cruising and Eastern Railroad are songs that you’d definitely have on blast while driving through blinding neon lights. With a more upbeat pop sensibilities, Twilight Bay City and Riverside Hotel are synthpop gems that you can't help singing along with. Never Ending Summer 1-4 is like a spiritual experience through a funk summer landscape, with each song blending into the next like a sonic tapestry of youth, the summertime and the melancholia that accompanies it all.
Lover’s Logic, Piper
Funk-rock accompanied by glistening, gliding, grooving synths with an incredibly 80s rock ballad vocal delivery from lead vocalist Keisuke Yamamoto, Lover’s Logic is perfect electro pop/rock with a very timeless feeling to it. With the synth as the central instrument, from the [now] nostalgic synth sounds of the 80s, what we’re left with is a feeling of sailing through life, which comes through most prominently through the fun sparkly guitar riffs on Trade Wind and almost melancholic New York - Review, a feeling of youth and love conveyed through the upbeat Starlight Ballet, the slow dreamy and atmospheric ballads Keep on Loving You and Photograph, and some solid electro-funk grooves like Anata no Toriko and Please Please.
Transit, Yasuha
Fly-day Chinatown is an undeniable mainstay of most City pop playlists - with its fun funk intro, incredibly danceable to instrumentals - one feels like such a diva singing along to it. But Transit -the album its off IS an underrated gem. Yasuha’s vocals are so characteristic and powerful on each power ballad after another, with the entire album feeling like a pop rock tinged broadway performance - she is the star, the moment and the swing and soul sounds further elevate this performance to a whole other level. The entire album feels like a main character movie soundtrack - uplifting power rock on Morning Date, a bittersweet piano ballad on Arikitarina Sujigaki, electronic-flamenco sexiness of Love Magic and eventual goodbyes on the wistful Remember Summertime.
Passio, Etsuko Sai
Passio comes at you like a boogie punch straight out of left field, and sticks you with a groove unlike any other, right from the get go with the beats on Airport Dance. You would find it incredibly hard to not move along to Pygmalion, Tenshi no Tuxedo and Fun! Fun! Fun! - disco tunes one after the other - eclectic synths straight out of the 80s [obviously], and Sai’s vocal delivery that works perfectly with the funk and ties it all together. Even on the bossanova Kanashikunainoni, the poppy jazz fusion Eien no Morning Moon, and the slow synth rock jam Yawaraki Ame, the groovy beat carries through. If there was a way to describe it, it would be 80s romcom anime opening, but you’ve got to hear it to believe it, and you would be missing out if you didn’t.
Magical, Junko Ohashi
The third album in her compilation series Junko Ohashi no Sekaii, Ohashi’s Magical is a collection of some of her best work up till the 80's. The album is a mix of power ballads, love songs and disco tracks all set to groovy synth-pop funk, all topped off with Ohashi’s powerful soul vocals. It features the City pop mainstays I Love You So, Telephone Number and A Love Affair, with their ever so catchy refrains and Ohashi’s dynamic vocals. Magical has a distinct 80's synth-pop power ballad feel to it, particularly on the A-side with songs like Isn’t it Magic, Perfume and Tasogare that are very much reminiscent of 80's love songs from the west. The B-side is more City pop, with underrated jams like Another Day, Another Love, the disco moment Dancin’ and the closing love song Sugao no Mamade.
Can I Sing?, Masayoshi Takanaka
Masayoshi Takanaka is one of the greats of Japanese contemporary music - a prolific guitarist and producer, with a massive catalog of guitar based jazz-funk albums. Can I Sing? stands out among his other albums in it’s a synth-pop and disco influences, making it a certified City pop album. Featuring a mix of both only instrumental pieces and pieces with vocals, Takanaka shows off his guitar genius in covering different sounds like surf rock on Jumping Take Off, funk rock on Funk’n’Roll Train, and the latin fusion-jazz sounds (a sound he particularly enjoys playing, if we were to look at his discography) on Straight from the Heart and Sail on Fire. His vocal performances on the atmospheric Noon and the poppy funk-rock Santigo Bay Rendez-Vous make these standout tracks on the album.
Sachet, Asami Kado
Atmospheric, dainty, electro pop, Sachet is moody in all the right ways, and that mood is of a happening 80s night - bright and sparkly, sexy yet melancholic. The funky bossanova opener C’est Si Bon sets the mood going forward, with exactly what the rest of the album has to offer - suave ballads, some set to stripped back piano and double bass like Kudari no Nai Sakamichi, some oozing glitzy pop rock like Lonely Lonely and Yasashii Koe de Koroshite, playfully groovy synth rock on Yokokujou (Hajimete no Tegami) - all thoroughly reminiscent of the 80s that we’ve come to know through romantic films, sparkly, warm, hazy, lovelorn, and above all, beautiful, which is perhaps the best way to describe the atmosphere this album conjures.
Pacific, Haruomi Hosono, Tatsuro Yamashita & Shigeru Suzuki
An instrumental teleport to a the sunny palm covered beaches of a pacific island, and a brilliantly atmospheric instrumental album at that, the fittingly titled Pacific is a collaboration between the greats - Yamashita, Hosono and Suzuki. A thoroughly cohesive tropical jazz and bossanova album, with the slightly electronic undertones and smooth synths, with slick guitar riffs, it is an album you can put on in the background and completely lose yourself in. Not exactly City Pop, the album might be a miss if you’re looking for the disco funk of City pop, but it definitely is a groovy tropical influenced classic and there is nothing quite like it.
Voices, Hatsumi Shibata
Suave, clean, effortlessly chic, yet gritty when it needs to be, Shibata’s Voices is like an exploration in the limitless potential of moody synths - with the entire album being a purely synths, percussion and melancholic vocal affair. The melancholic Kanashimi no Nagisa, the provocative Toriaezu X.T.C, the gritty and urgent THE SPY I LOVE and Hotel, and the intimate Last Summer and Mr. J - is all evocative of an ambient electro-pop neon noir soundscape, with a self-sure, yet wistful (in a chic way) femme fatale making her way through an 80s night. With a detective noir narrative and produced by Joe Hisaishi, Voices has a sountrack-esque quality to it, with Shibata’s coy vocals tying this sonic experience all together.
Tropic of Capricorn, Momoko Kikuchi
Tropic of Capricorn is, in the best possible way, an incredibly cute album. A jammy electro-pop wormhole, further elevated by Kikuchi’s coquettish pop ballad delivery, the sweeping slow nostalgia soaked Sotsugyou, the moody drive Koi no Projection, the summer pop Manatsu no Sequence, a pop-rock Dear Children, the spacey electro-pop/rock Southern Cross Dreaming, the dreamy melancholia of Ai no Surf Break, the slow rock ballad Minamikaikisen - with each one better than the last, its hard to pick a favourite off Tropic of Capricorn. The album washes over you, the little spacey, dream sequence synth moments and pop sensibilities sink in, make themselves at home in your system and instantly transports you to a completely removed 80s shaped pocket in time.
Party Tonight, Hiroyuki Namba
Party Tonight plays out like a musical suite, with a sound that transitions from heavy prog rock to the many niches of City Pop we've now come to know of. The prog rock section starts off with an intensely atmospheric Overture, leading directly into the synth laden prog-rock triptych of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - the almost Gregorian chant-like Eyes, a driven funk-rock Hands and the tame, yet pompous Teeth, all brought to a close with Namba’s melancholic vocals over the slow burning The Tower in My Dreams. The City Pop section is perhaps the most diverse collection of sounds on any album - Party Tonight is a slow pop-funk number, Lost Love (The Rainy Spaceport) is a spacey piano-ballad with gliding synths, Fall of Moondust is a hard rock instrumental piece with a guitar solo to die for and City of Silver Grey brings the album to a close with a solid funk groove
Shambara, Shambara
Bursting at the seams with more funk, boogie groove and rock than should be legally allowed, with harmonised vocals from Kaoru Akimoto and Yurie Kokubu reminiscent of groups of people singing their song at the top of their lungs, some of the funkiest guitar, bass and synths with little instrumental flourishes that add that extra bit of spiciness, produced by Tetsuo Sakurai and Akira Jimbo of Cassiopeia fame, the eponymous Shambara is a delightfully vibrant City Pop album. From the larger than life sound of On the Earth, the undeniable soul swagger of Take Me Higher, the collected melancholia of Lovin’ You, the choral sing along-ability of Hurry Up to You and the tropical City Pop vibes on In the Universe, Shambara is a slept upon definitive collection of City pop songs.
Continental, Yumi Seino
At times the most experimental electro-pop- fusion and at times the softest jazziest City pop, Continental is a beautifully theatrical album. Featuring jazz, pop-rock, classical and electro-pop elements, it is an absolute delight to listen to - Mama and Les Divorces (Honto no Aishiteru) are stripped back electronic/stringed instrumental takes on ballads, La Maison est en Ruine (Itte Monamour) is an unexplainably modern classic, Katumuku with its funky synth-rock, the spacey synths of Mayonaka no Denwa and the piano ballad Une Simple Melodie (Yoru Sayonara) are more on the pop-funk side of City Pop, while Chez Laurette (Chez no Namida), Moshikashite Asuwa Fuyu, and Suna no Utsuwa are eclectic electronic fusion pieces that seem so out of time in the wider context of City pop, yet so at home - because at its core, Continental is City Pop at some of its finest with absolutely gorgeous instrumentals that get you right into the groove.
Thru Traffic, Tohoku Shinkansen
From session musicians Etsuko Yamakawa and Hiroshi Narumi comes an absolute City Pop gem. Thru Traffic is an album that stays with you right from the opening guitar riffs on Summer Touches You. You’re in the zone, moving along with the funk beats on Up and Down, and then the album gets just gets that much more better. Lush atmospheric synths on Kokoro no Mama ni and Tsuki ni Yorisotte, the ever so funky instrumentals that just keep on giving on Up and Down and Strange Wine, the definitive 80s ethereal soundscape on September Valentine, the instrumental Spell and the jazzy Last Message. Thru Traffic is pure nostalgia, youth, pop-rock jammy goodness and smooth smooth soul-funk that you just can't deny.
Tokyo Sniper, Ryusenkei
Tokyo Sniper is a modern City pop album. Produced a whole two decades after the City pop era, it is a narrative of love learnt and lost, City pop themes set to a vey jazz ensemble of vintage synths, clean bass and incredibly tight drums. It foregoes the big sound of original City pop for a more intimate sound. Gorgeous instrumentals paired with Nica Eiguchi’s vocals gives the recording a live jazz performance sort of feeling - one at your favourite jazz bar with a drink in hand at the end of a long night out. Incredibly atmospheric, the opening Time Machine Love and Last Number of Love, Distance of the Heliotrope are reminiscent of driving through neon city lights with broken heart, Dancing into Fantasy is an ethereal tune with spacey synths of escapism to a paradise where love pans out.
About the Author:
Mishima Toppo: is a self proclaimed jack-of-all-trades. After authoring an A-grade graduation thesis about something completely unrelated, they’ve moved on to their day job of telling people about niche albums on the internet and exploring visual media.
