Like much of modern music, the aesthetics of city pop were heavily influenced by the emerging technologies of the era - particularly in 1980s Japan where domestic manufacturers were producing exciting new technologies amidst an economic boom. It’s likely due to this that the retro sounds of city pop strike a chord with modern music listeners, who find an unassuming depth to the style where perhaps they feel contemporary mainstream pop music is lacking - and then there’s the romanticised image of 1980s Japan. Many of the instrumentalists and songwriters, after all, were often seasoned session musicians in their own right with incredibly well-rounded knowledge of music theory one group on Tokyo Glow for example, The New Generation Company, was something of a supergroup of musicians who would play for artists like Tatsuro Yamashita (a progenitor of ‘80s Japanese pop who sadly doesn’t make it onto this compilation).
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Perhaps the easiest comparison to make is it’s what us in ‘The West’ might call A.O.R., combining the sounds of soft rock and funk music for a young, city-dwelling professional crowd - though city pop artists do throw in the odd bit of adventurous jazz harmony every now and then. A somewhat loosely defined subgenre of popular music originating in 1980s Japan, the term ‘city pop’ is more often used retrospectively by international fans of the genre - to any growing up around that time it’s simply ‘pop music’ (although I do recall seeing a small city pop CD display at Tower Records in Shibuya a couple of years back). I’ll always jump at the chance to talk about city pop, and with this excellent new compilation of underrated cuts from the genre’s heyday courtesy of We Want Sounds, I have the perfect excuse.