Japanese City Pop: 1980s urban driving music

I was a mid-20’s year old hanging out in Dōtonbori Osaka. The clubs, food, people, customs, amazing. That being said the majority of nightlife in Dōtonbori caters to drunk foreigners (like myself), which was incredibly fun, but many popular clubs are not unlike a club you might see in Miami or New York.

Stumbling around the city at 5 am, my friends and I decided to go to one last club on our way back to our hostel. We found a little hole in the wall club with maybe 20 patrons and a dance floor. The DJ played American hip hop for a bit, and as a “get the fuck out of here and go to bed” cue, he played Anri’s Timely!! album, beginning to end.

Idk if any of you have been shitfaced in a club dancing to Anri’s Shyness Boy, but it changes a person. I didn’t know the song or artist at the time, and couldn’t necessarily remember any of the lyrics as I don’t speak anything beyond very basic Japanese.

After an hour of googling “80s Japanese music” I found it, and thus was my gateway into one of my all time favorite genres.

Cleaning the house? City pop. Entertaining company? City pop. Working at my computer? City pop. To me, it’s timeless; a golden age in music across all genres.

Here are my all time favorites:

Pretty much all of Timely!! - Anri
Music Box - Tatsuro (and the rest of For You)
First Light - the whole album
Tokai - Taeko Onuki
Love Trip - Mamiya Takako (whole album for this one too - sorry, I can’t choose)

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CD Collection Showcase 2024 (i.redd.it)

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The original was posted on /r/citypop by /u/brown10town on 2025-01-03 21:32:00+00:00.

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Well, according to a Japanese blog, there exist 7 versions of Tokyo Tower by Kadomatsu. On the playlist, I have 5 of them. Another two are exclusive of limited and fans albums (i.redd.it)

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The original was posted on /r/citypop by /u/Unable_Employee631 on 2025-01-03 01:49:27+00:00.

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RIE HATADA LOST SONG (i.redd.it)

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The original was posted on /r/citypop by /u/Apprehensive-Hold-10 on 2025-01-03 01:43:09+00:00.

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my cd collection is slowly growing! (i.redd.it)

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The original was posted on /r/citypop by /u/piecksfinger on 2025-01-02 22:40:58+00:00.

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TIL Haruomi Hosono, YMO's bassist and all-around citypop legend, is the grandson of the only Japanese Titanic survivor. (en.wikipedia.org)

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The original was posted on /r/citypop by /u/lfvmusic on 2025-01-02 22:15:45+00:00.

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Happy New Year! + Important Announcement (old.reddit.com)

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The original was posted on /r/citypop by /u/Nav_Panel on 2025-01-02 20:30:32+00:00.

Hey folks! Happy New Year!

We've been a community for 10 years at this point, and it's been amazing seeing it grow. My heartfelt thanks to everyone for the contributions; I've discovered so much great music over the years.

As for the announcement: as the years pass, our world continues to grow and change, and one of the big changes over this last year has been technological, specifically the growth in AI tools. AI tools for music creation are very cool, but as a historical and regional music community (City Pop, is, after all, from the 1980s in Japan) it presents us with a conundrum. How should we deal with it, given that folks on the sub seem generally OK with contemporary music in the classic style?

The community consensus seems to be that we should ban AI-generated music, especially since it's a prime vector for spam. I want to throw in my support to this consensus (as is my role as janitor), and with that, I will be taking the heretofore unforeseen action of adding another subreddit rule, or really extending the existing rule, which will be put on the sidebar shortly:

Please do not share illegal download links or AI generated music on the subreddit. Thanks!

Given that I'm the only moderator on the subreddit, I need your help: if you see something, say something. Flag the post and I'll get to it within a few hours in most cases. I review every flagged item every day, so if we work together we can keep this subreddit a clean and fun place to share the music we all love.

Here's to a SMOOTH 2025!

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Big Wave (1984) is a little-known surfing documentary that was paired with a chart-topping Japanese cover album by the legendary Tatsuro Yamashita. The album lives on, but the film is forgotten an... (i.redd.it)

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The original was posted on /r/citypop by /u/International-Sky65 on 2025-01-01 23:22:38+00:00.

Original Title: Big Wave (1984) is a little-known surfing documentary that was paired with a chart-topping Japanese cover album by the legendary Tatsuro Yamashita. The album lives on, but the film is forgotten and very hard to find in any digital format. Seems like the perfect job for Criterion! Here's my cover!