I discovered Japanese “city pop” back in 2018, and I was instantly mesmerized by this glossy blend of jazz, funk, soul, and pop that “tapped into, and promoted, a more urban, upscale, cosmopolitan, and optimistic view of modern Japanese life.” Although the music largely died out in Japan after the collapse of the ‘80s “bubble economy,” the genre proved deeply influential to vaporwave and future funk and has seen a resurgence in the last decade courtesy of artists like Macross 82 – 99, Opus Science Collective, and Saint Pepsi.

The original “city pop” was a wealth of talented musicians and composers, like Toshiki Kadomatsu and Tatsuro Yamashita. For my money, though, Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love” is the city pop song. Originally released in 1984, Takeuchi’s song experienced a newfound popularity through an extended remix that appeared on YouTube sometime in the late 2010s. “Plastic Love” is as slick and glossy as city pop gets, with arrangements that presage Daft Punk’s own slick, glossy music. Takeuchi’s voice and lyrics, however, imbue the song with a sense of longing from the perspective of a broken-hearted young woman who’s given up on love altogether, and glides from one empty fling to the next.

The juxtaposition of bright, club-friendly production and arrangements with lyrics like “I’m just playing games/I know that’s plastic love/Dance to the plastic beat/Another morning comes” is never not alluring, making me nostalgic for an era that I was never a part of.