7 months ago
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On this day, 2 decades ago, Miki Matsubara died softly successful Osaka, acold from the lights that erstwhile shimmered disconnected her stage-ready smile. She was lone forty-four, but her dependable was already immortal. The pistillate who had fixed Japan 1 of its astir enduring popular elegies — Mayonaka nary Door (Stay With Me) — was gone, leaving down an anthem that felt similar a speech betwixt a federation astatine the tallness of its optimism and the generations calved into its aftermath.
In the years since her death, Matsubara has go thing of a ghostly emissary for an full sound: Citypop, the gleaming, metropolitan dreamscape of late-70s and 80s Japan. Now revived done net nostalgia, her opus has go the introduction constituent for millions who cognize thing of the economical occurrence it scored, nor the melancholia of the disillusionment that followed.
(For afloat immersion, I’d suggest speechmaking the remainder of this portion piece spinning Stay With Me. It’s the closest you’ll get to stepping into the glossy, late-night cosmos that Matsubara and Citypop dreamed up decades ago. Side effects whitethorn see wistful sighs, abrupt nostalgia, and tears you didn’t cognize were waiting)
The aboriginal dependable of the past
To recognize Citypop is to recognize the little and blinding committedness of the Japanese bubble years. The 1980s were a clip of vertigo — Japan had remade itself into an economical superpower and its cities were pulsing with fluorescent excess. The mediate people was swelling, the yen was strong, and an full procreation recovered itself equipped with disposable income and imported dreams. The thriving metropolises of Yokohama, Osaka and Tokyo had evolved into prosperous statements of arrival.
The soundscape of that ethos followed suit. The transistor, the Walkman and the high-fidelity stereo — each these inventions gave dependable a caller intimacy, a mode to transportation the metropolis successful your pocket. Citypop thrived connected that intimacy. It was sophisticated, creaseless and cosmopolitan euphony made by metropolis people, for metropolis people, successful an effort to emulate the Western thought of the ‘good life’. It borrowed from American funk, AOR, disco, and jazz fusion, yet what emerged was refined, melodically lush, emotionally ambivalent and distinctly Japanese. But astir importantly, it captured a feeling of suspended euphoria — the feeling that the night, and possibly past itself, would ne'er end.
Birth of a moment
The genre’s origins hint backmost to an unsuccessful folk-rock set with small power astatine the time, Happy End, and their 1971 medium Kazamachi Roman. By singing stone successful Japanese, they broke the “language barrier” that had divided authenticity from aspiration. Music could present beryllium proudly home portion inactive looking outward. Their members — Haruomi Hosono, Eiichi Ohtaki, Shigeru Suzuki, Takashi Matsumoto — would spell connected to signifier the full sonic blueprint of modern Japanese pop.
From this lineage came the glittery sophistication of Sugar Babe’s Songs (1975), wherever a young Tatsuro Yamashita began experimenting with harmonies borrowed from Steely Dan and the Beach Boys. Yamashita would aboriginal cleanable the signifier successful the aboriginal 80s with the seminal Ride connected Time and For You, whose brass flourishes, chorused guitars, and breezy optimism became shorthand for the bubble decade.
Alongside him roseate formative artists similar Mariya Takeuchi, whose Plastic Love (1984) captured the seductive loneliness of Tokyo’s nightlife, and Taeko Ohnuki, who collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto connected the lush, diaphanous Sunshower (1977). Anri had polished the breezy vocals of 1983’s Timely!! into a blueprint for the modern municipality romance that radiated assurance adjacent if she couldn’t halt the loneliness. The aforesaid twelvemonth Tomoko Aran’s Fuyu nary Mirage brought a cool, nocturnal sophistication, with evocative layered synths and subtle disco inflections that The Weeknd reproduced successful 2022’s Out of Time. Junko Ohashi’s Magical (1979) soon leaned into brushed stone and orchestral pop, that lent the genre a cinematic sweep. Meanwhile, the likes of Toshiki Kadomatsu had go architects of Citypop’s groovy elegance; albums similar 1982’s Sea Breeze fused jazz, funk, and R&B into an aural, high-rise soundtrack for ambition and contemplation.
But it was Miki Matsubara’s genre-defining Shōwa retro nostalgia portion that drew a much subtle span betwixt youthful exuberance and municipality melancholy. Stay With Me is deceptively bright, but its syncopated grooves betray tremors of longing and an ache for permanence successful a metropolis that ne'er sleeps agelong capable to retrieve your name.
Music for a federation connected the brink
By the precocious 80s, the optimism had reached its crescendo. Tokyo’s skyline bloomed with cranes, and champagne flowed done karaoke bars and glass-walled penthouses. The bouyant accumulation and immaculate arrangements of Citypop, with songs astir driving, loving and leaving; mirrored that lifestyle. And then, astir overnight, it was gone.
When Japan’s economical bubble burst successful 1992, the neon glare waned and the state entered its “Lost Decade.” Youth unemployment rose, onshore values collapsed, and the connection of ambition began to dependable absurd. That erstwhile soundtrack of prosperity had abruptly begun to consciousness tone-deaf.
Some artists adapted, moving toward R&B oregon physics music, but astir faded into obscurity. Matsubara, who had already begun retreating from nationalist life, stopped signaling altogether by the precocious 90s. Her last years were spent successful limbo, arsenic the euphony she helped specify drifted into the inheritance of convenience stores and retro compilations.
The afterlife
Today, Citypop has recovered its 2nd beingness successful the integer century. Since the precocious 2010s, listeners astir the satellite began stumbling upon the genre done online serendipity. A thumbnail of a neon skyline oregon a summery beach, a looping animation of a miss successful headphones, oregon adjacent a YouTube playlist titled Citypop-core: the aesthetic curiosities of this wistful decennary bloomed into a planetary phenomenon.
Matsubara was hardly 20 erstwhile she sang her opus astir a emotion that refused to slice with the dawn, and present decades later, that elemental refrain has go the accidental epitaph for an full genre. Stay With Me crossed millions of streams overnight and Plastic Love had spurred a renaissance for that mislaid infinitesimal successful time. The dependable of a state dreaming itself modern has go the balm for a procreation disillusioned with the modern world. For listeners scrolling done late-night feeds, these songs promised an elegia of imagined stability. The euphony of a vanished optimism had go the refuge for those who ne'er knew it, and that erstwhile dismissed “music for salarymen,” present circulates arsenic the polished ancestor for vaporwave, sampled and re-contextualised into integer melancholia.
Citypop ne'er genuinely died. It’s been waiting successful dormancy for the satellite to consciousness again what Japan felt astatine the extremity of its bubble, with the vertigo of diminution and the ache of deferred futures. Perhaps that is wherefore it resonates truthful overmuch now, successful this caller epoch of evaporated certainties and algorithmic detachment. We too, unrecorded successful a nine obsessed with images of happiness it tin nary longer afford. So possibly it wasn’t Japan’s mislaid decennary we’ve been mourning aft all, but the mislaid condemnation that past was headed determination worthy arriving.
Citypop’s calamity was its perfection. It captured a infinitesimal erstwhile Japan was utterly convinced the aboriginal would beryllium creaseless and radiant, and that illusion was excessively beauteous to last. Its longing optimism was fragile and its sadness is often disguised successful groove, but we support listening due to the fact that we excessively are looking for ways to enactment with the nighttime a small longer.
