Tuesday Vibes: Citypop

[FrodoSwaggins]

This post was last modified: 02-05-2025, 08:38 PM by FrodoSwaggins. Edit Reason: Tags

[gorzek]

I love city pop. There are people who do some lovely English covers of some of the more famous ones, too:



And here's a recent city pop album!

[ScottyMcGee]

Hell yeah City POP!!!!

This is my go-to playlist 


Quite fascinating the resurgence of Tokyo City Pop. Miki Matsubara, who did Stay With Me, sadly never lived to see her work receive the praise it has now. Her song is often considered the reason for the resurgence in Tokyo City Pop. It's really fucking sad actually. She died in 2004 from cervical cancer. In 2000 she found out about the late-stage cancer and regretted working so much instead of enjoying life. She associated her music career with cancer slowly killing her. She burned every personal copy of every song she ever made. Per the Wiki: 

She stopped all music activities and disappeared from the spotlight altogether. She burned all her cherished sheet music and records. In an e-mail sent to her cousin at the time, she wrote, "Please forget all the times in the past when I was singing and composing."

Damn. R.I.P.

[gorzek]

As far as I can tell, city pop made a resurgence thanks to vaporwave (and all the other *wave derivatives.)
Once you get outside the stuff that's just "Diana Ross but slowed way down," it seems like the go-to was harvesting city pop because, you have to admit, that shit's got the vibes.
Here's a great example of an original city pop album (I have this one on CD, I love it so much):

But I actually discovered it via this vaporwave album:

I think a little while back The Weeknd also sampled a city pop song which of course sent interest into the stratosphere.
I am all for it. I am an anti-hipster about this stuff. The more people enjoying music, the better!!!