{
  "slug": "city-pop",
  "name": "City Pop",
  "aliases": [
    "シティ・ポップ",
    "japanese city pop",
    "light mellow"
  ],
  "description": "Tokyo in its bubble years: session-perfect studio pop made for people with a new car and a coastal road, borrowing American funk, soft rock and disco and polishing them past anything the originals attempted.",
  "origin": {
    "place": "Tokyo, Japan",
    "year": 1976
  },
  "lineage": [
    {
      "genre": "funk",
      "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/funk/",
      "inherited": "The rhythm section. Japanese session players studied American funk records with a rigour bordering on the forensic, and the bass and drum parts here are technically cleaner than most of what they were copying."
    },
    {
      "genre": "disco",
      "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/disco/",
      "inherited": "The gloss and the four-on-the-floor. City pop takes disco's string arrangements and production budget and points them at a private, domestic kind of pleasure rather than at a dancefloor."
    },
    {
      "genre": "soul",
      "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/soul/",
      "inherited": "The vocal manners. The phrasing, the backing-vocal stacks and the chord changes are lifted from American soft soul, then sung in Japanese, which does something odd and lovely to the stresses."
    }
  ],
  "bpm": {
    "min": 90,
    "max": 130
  },
  "updated": "2026-08-30",
  "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/city-pop/",
  "trackCount": 8,
  "curatedBy": [],
  "playlists": {},
  "tracks": [
    {
      "rank": 1,
      "trackKey": "mariya-takeuchi--plastic-love",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/mariya-takeuchi--plastic-love/",
      "title": "Plastic Love",
      "artist": "Mariya Takeuchi",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/mariya-takeuchi/",
      "year": 1984,
      "label": "Moon",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "A woman announcing she will not fall in love again, over the most buoyant arrangement imaginable. Rediscovered by a YouTube algorithm thirty years later and now the genre's front door.",
      "alsoOn": [
        {
          "kind": "curator",
          "slug": "sung-to-someone",
          "name": "Sung to Someone",
          "url": "https://waxonia.com/theme/sung-to-someone/"
        }
      ],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Mariya%20Takeuchi%20Plastic%20Love",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=T_lC2O1oIew",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 2,
      "trackKey": "tatsuro-yamashita--ride-on-time",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/tatsuro-yamashita--ride-on-time/",
      "title": "Ride on Time",
      "artist": "Tatsuro Yamashita",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/tatsuro-yamashita/",
      "year": 1980,
      "label": "AIR",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Yamashita is the architect of the whole sound — arranger, producer, and the man stacking his own backing vocals twenty deep. This is the record that made him a household name at home.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Tatsuro%20Yamashita%20Ride%20on%20Time",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=D3JuhTytFgI",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 3,
      "trackKey": "miki-matsubara--mayonaka-no-door-stay-with-me",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/miki-matsubara--mayonaka-no-door-stay-with-me/",
      "title": "Mayonaka no Door / Stay With Me",
      "artist": "Miki Matsubara",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/miki-matsubara/",
      "year": 1979,
      "label": "Canyon",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Recorded when she was nineteen. The intro is four bars of pure confidence, and four decades on it did the same thing to streaming that Plastic Love did.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Miki%20Matsubara%20Mayonaka%20no%20Door%20%2F%20Stay%20With%20Me",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=lags8E4hvow",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 4,
      "trackKey": "anri--windy-summer",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/anri--windy-summer/",
      "title": "Windy Summer",
      "artist": "Anri",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/anri/",
      "year": 1983,
      "label": "For Life",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Toshiki Kadomatsu's arrangement, and about as close as pop gets to a sensation of speed. Everything in city pop that is about a coast road is about this record.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Anri%20Windy%20Summer",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=-8WTumwpvmg",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 5,
      "trackKey": "tatsuro-yamashita--sparkle",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/tatsuro-yamashita--sparkle/",
      "title": "Sparkle",
      "artist": "Tatsuro Yamashita",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/tatsuro-yamashita/",
      "year": 1982,
      "label": "Air",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "The guitar figure that opens For You, and the most imitated four bars in Japanese pop. Nothing here is doing more than it needs to.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Tatsuro%20Yamashita%20Sparkle",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=pqobRu9aR3M",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 6,
      "trackKey": "taeko-ohnuki--sunshower",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/taeko-ohnuki--sunshower/",
      "title": "Sunshower",
      "artist": "Taeko Ohnuki",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/taeko-ohnuki/",
      "year": 1977,
      "label": "Panam",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Ohnuki came from Sugar Babe with Yamashita and went somewhere stranger — closer to Brazilian harmony and orchestral pop. The connoisseur's answer to the obvious picks.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Taeko%20Ohnuki%20Sunshower",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=uhILzP60STQ",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 7,
      "trackKey": "yellow-magic-orchestra--rydeen",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/yellow-magic-orchestra--rydeen/",
      "title": "Rydeen",
      "artist": "Yellow Magic Orchestra",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/yellow-magic-orchestra/",
      "year": 1979,
      "label": "Alfa",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Not city pop and impossible to separate from it: the same studios, the same players, and a synthesiser future that the rest of the scene absorbed within a year.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Yellow%20Magic%20Orchestra%20Rydeen",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=-BUZ_zRAmf0",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 8,
      "trackKey": "junko-ohashi--telephone-number",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/junko-ohashi--telephone-number/",
      "title": "Telephone Number",
      "artist": "Junko Ohashi",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/junko-ohashi/",
      "year": 1984,
      "label": "Philips",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Disco brass, a chorus built to be shouted, and a voice with more grit than the genre usually allows. City pop when it stops being wistful.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Junko%20Ohashi%20Telephone%20Number",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=XJWqHmY-g9U",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}