Memoirs of a Gaijin II: Teacup of Melancholy

I often lay on my bed at dusk, looking up in my dimly lit room to watch the fading light stream through my curtains while listening to city pop. It's like therapy in a way. It teaches me that no matter what happens during the day, the sun is sure to set again, and I'm forever bound to this celestial movement that governs the cycles of night and day. I find some kind of comfort in this trivial yet profound phenomenon.

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PersonalVan Paugam
Why Tatsuro Yamashita’s Vinyl Represses Are The Most Important Of The Year

2023 is set to be a record year for City Pop. From Anri getting a feature on CNN, to the huge news that a certain king of City Pop is having his entire RCA/AIR years discography repressed. Ofcorse, we’re talking about Tatsuro Yamashita. The significance of this repress event cannot be understated due to how crazed city pop vinyl collectors are when it comes to Tatsuro vinyl. The cream of any collection almost always includes a copy of For You, Spacy, or Ride on Time.

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What Happened to Takako Mamiya? [Mystery Solved]

Takako Mamiya has captured millions of listeners’ hearts with her iconic City Pop album; Love Trip. Everyone who knows City Pop knows of this record. It’s an illustrious example of Japanese Jazz Pop Fusion that has a very late night vibe to it, and Takako’s voice adds a very husky, sultry creme on top of it that would make anyone swoon. Love Trip, the record, has been repressed several times now since her popularity caught on, and the album almost always sells out.

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Another Top 10 City Pop Songs List

City Pop, the sound of metropolitan Japan in the 80s has now become more widely known than a few years back. Its magical melodies and sincerely funky rhythms have already captivated millions of people, creating a surge in popularity for many iconic Japanese artists. Even though the world has already become enamored with the most notable of City Pop artists, there exists a plethora of Japanese musicians in the genre that are catching their second wind now that Japanese record labels are starting to re-press

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City PopVan Paugam
10 City Pop Songs About Summer

Ah, feel that Yokohama breeze! The azure horizon sparkles in the distance as the ocean whispers its crescent waves coalescing onto the sandy shore to meet your toes. The crystal blue waters look like glass and as you breathe in deeply you feel the kiss of the sun peaking through a perfectly white cloud atlas as you exhale deeply, finally. Summer is here…

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Memoirs of a Gaijin

For the past 5 years I spent much of my life trying very hard to promote Japanese City Pop music, often neglecting all other facets of my life. I wanted so much to help spread this music that had been left in a state of neglect when I found it. I found a purpose in playing the music and making mixes to spread awareness of these Japanese artists who deserved a bigger audience than they had. Discovering Japanese artists brought a sense of meaning to my life after years of floating around in the Vaporwave scene searching for a deeper understanding of the world we live in.

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PersonalVan Paugam
The Rise & Fall of Vaporwave

Vaporwave in 2021 is a bit of a quagmire. Almost everything that can be said about it has already been written or blogged about somewhere online since its early inception around 2010. Countless articles will flood your search pages all theorizing on either the intense faux-philosophical undertones of the music or some pseudo-intellectual analysis of the artwork that permeates the genre like a parasitic neon haze that suffocates your eyes.

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Why is City Pop Nostalgic?

City Pop is a nostalgic genre of music for many people in the West for several reasons. Firstly, City Pop was popular in Japan during the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, a time when Japan was experiencing a period of rapid economic growth and cultural expansion. This era is often referred to as the "Bubble Economy" in Japan and is remembered as a time of great optimism and prosperity.

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City Pop & Depression

Depression. A condition many people can instantly relate to. So much of life can be consumed by a never-ending merry-go-round of emotions that lifts us up high only to drop us back down to the rocks below. The tide of time sweeps us into the waves of our subconscious feelings, and it Tokyo-drifts us deeper into the depths of another state of mind. Music has always been that lifeboat on the horizon, waving lights, attempting to locate me in the disaster of whatever temporary trauma caused the annihilation.

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PersonalVan Paugam
What Happened to Artzie Music

Artzie Music was hit with multiple copyright strikes by an agency called ShoPro otherwise known as Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions Co., Ltd. A Japanese production company and a subsidiary of the Japanese publishing group Hitotsubashi Group. The YouTube channel received several violations at once prompting the Google-owned video platform to issue a termination date set to October 27, 2020.

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City Pop Aesthetics

Contemporary City Pop aesthetics are at the intersection of Vaporwave, Future-funk, and Retro Anime design ideologies. Generally a combination of re-occurring motifs combining 80s style-tropes mixed with Japanese sensibilities, pastel colors, and scenery involving city life along with similar concepts.

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What is Korean City Pop

Korean City Pop is 1970s and 1980s inspired contemporary music re-imagined through the lens of a fictional past of the country’s history. Korean City Pop is pioneered by famous K-Pop stars and many in the indie scene there have also adopted the style adding their unique perspective on the music. While not enjoying the same bubble economy that Japan was experiencing at the time, Korean artists and producers show an acceptance of the style as a legitimate musical movement that focuses on retro elements both Western and Eastern.

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MusicVan PaugamKorean, City Pop
The Top 10 City Pop Albums

In every genre there are albums that exemplify the sound, and City Pop, while more loosely defined than others, still has a distinctive style that is recognizable to those who know what to look for. The checklist for City Pop almost always includes a fusion of two or more elements from genres like Funk, Jazz, Pop, or Disco crowned with English chorus sections, blaring instrumental solo, and warm production quality.

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