City Pop is it here to stay? Stay with me!

Ever since I was a little girl, the music of the 80s pulled me in and has taken a hold of me. If you listen to my original music and check out all my photos in this article, you will see how much I love the aesthetic and sound of the 80s and how it’s influenced me as a music artist.

I have always had a huge love and appreciation for musical artist Yamashita Tatsuro and for years I was confused as to how no one knew of his music in the States. Especially since he has many songs in English. His song “Christmas Eve” should be a timeless classic all over the world! Well fast forward to the present and many people now know of Yamashita Tatsuro’s amazing classics like “Ride On Time”, “Magic Ways”, and “Sparkle”. City Pop is very popular now that even while scrolling on apps like TikTok you will hear many artists in the background of random videos. Artists like Mariya Takeuchi and her song “Plastic Love” which was never a huge hit in Japan but has now made an impact worldwide when it went viral first on YouTube.

Locally in Los Angeles DJ collective and promoters Tune In Tokyo have been running a club event called Plastic City where the whole night is all about City Pop and the music from 80s Japan. I have had the honor to perform at Plastic City many times and with the popularity of City Pop I am now performing all the 80s classics at many different venues as well.

In fact I’m very happy to announce that I will be having a city pop show over at Bridge USA Japanese Summer Festival held in Torrance on August 28th. The city pop show starts at 4PM PST and features a handful of local entertainers performing many classic city pop songs.

You can find more info about Bridge USA Summer Festival here: http://www.bridgeusa.com

When you look back on when did City Pop resurface to the US and the world that would have been in the second half of the 2010s decade. So now that we are in the year 2022 city pop has definitely been staying with us and I don’t see it going away anytime soon. The genre has become even more global in 2020 thanks to Miki Matsubara’s “Mayonaka no Door / Stay With Me” reaching #1 on Spotify’s viral charts via TikTok. If I wake up tomorrow and for some reason the City Pop love has come to an end, I can confidently say that it will always stay with me.