EVERY GENRE PROJECT - April 29 - City Pop

Genre of the Day - City Pop

Album of the Day - Timely!! by 杏里 [Anri] (1983)

April 29, 2024

You never know what the Internet is going to pick up and catapult back into the popular music picture. That’s evident every day on the global Spotify charts as you examine some of the songs released over five decades ago that still chart today. Perhaps no niche genre has gotten as much of a leg up as city pop thanks to YouTube and TikTok over the past decade, though. It’s no secret that Japanese aesthetics have been extra pored over and adored thanks to Internet proliferation, and city pop has been at the musical forefront of that.

City pop isn’t so much a tightly defined music genre so much as a variety of records drawing upon Western funk and soft rock music popular in Japan’s flourishing cities in the late ‘70s. Right before stagflation hit and curtailed Japan's economic ascendancy in the late ‘80s, the country was on an economic high. It was producing cutting-edge music technology, boatloads of family-ready cars, and a whole gamut of consumer goods. The dominant music among young adults was tailored to this mood, and it is accordingly good vibes. Tinged with R&B, boogie, funk, soft rock, and jazz, it’s a bunch of musical elements rolled into a cohesive but ultimately feel-good, sentimental whole. 

The national morale seemed to have wilted as technology progressed past the point of excitement and into ubiquity and economic growth slowed, leading to city pop commercially dying in Japan. The marriage of loosely defined Japanese vibes and simple-pleasure music remains of great appeal to the Internet shut-in or anime-loving TikTok addict, though. I can’t say I didn’t save “Flyday Chinatown”, an iconic shimmering single of the genre, to my library when it hit TikTok at the peak of my COVID-induced use, so I can attest to the genre percolating into my slice of the online world. It’s a romantic picture indeed: it harkens back to a time of simple but rich, bright instrumentation, beach vacations, long drives under prismatic city lights. Drenched in major 7ths and diminished chords like the premier American soft rockers, it inherently tugs on our nostalgic impulses. Have I mentioned that Americans love anything from Japan? It’s easy to see why it’s recirculated.

Anri’s Timely!! is one of the first testaments to the city pop and anime union that also probably makes it a beloved Internet genre. Its track “CAT’S EYE” was one of the first to be used as an anime series’ title track. It’s much more than that, though: the aptly-titled “WINDY SUMMER” gently evokes a cool breeze wafting off of the sea with its distant harmonies, celebratory horns, and a quintessentially ‘80s lux-pop sax. Anri has a great voice, and many songs are geared to showcase that such as the sweet ballad “YOU ARE NOT ALONE”, but the album shines best when she’s coasting off of a groove like the funky bass of “DRIVING MY LOVE.” The sentimentality is a central tenet of the genre’s appeal, though: there’s few other feelings that can envelop you so thoroughly as a listener in transporting you to a distant imagined past. It’s an interesting genre to ponder because it existed as something of a celebration of economic prosperity and good times in its day, and simultaneously a vehicle for emotional wistfulness now, a fantasy rather than any grounded reality. It’s easy to lose yourself in: a lovely musical respite.