City Pop

Genre

City Pop

Japanese pop shaped by the sound and optimism of urban life in the late 1970s and 1980s.

City Pop grew out of Japanese pop in the late 1970s and flourished through the 1980s, when Tokyo’s boom years called for music as polished as the city itself. Its writers and studio players folded funk, soft rock, jazz harmony and boogie into bright, carefully arranged songs for night drives and summer coastlines. Decades later it found a new audience online, feeding sounds such as vaporwave while staying closely tied to J-Pop.

Origin

Japan

Associated place

Tokyo

Period

Late 1970s–1980s

Connected in IJALA

Haruomi Hosono · Mariya Takeuchi · Tatsuro Yamashita · Tokyo · Shibuya · 1980s · Funk · Pop · Vaporwave · J-Pop · Dream Pop · Dreamy