While this musical genre may have lost some of its lustre in the early '90s, it has come back with a vengeance 20 years later on Tumblr and YouTube
Japanese city pop borrows from funk, soul, disco, lounge and even yacht rock.
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Harry Styles is at the origin of many clothing trends that have been resurrected from past decades. With his third and latest album, "Harry's House," he does the same thing with music;" the English singer here pays tribute to Japanese city pop, a genre once criticized as "elevator music." We take a closer look.
True to his generation—that of millennials, Harry Styles has a thing for nostalgia. So it's not surprising that for his latest album, "Harry's House," he drew inspiration from the 1970s and '80s. And more particularly from city pop, a musical genre that originated in Japan during a particularly prosperous era.
At the time, the West was grappling with an oil crisis, while the country of the Rising Sun was in the midst of an economic boom. Innovations in the automobile and technology sectors contributed to raising the profile of the country's international influence. Times were good in Tokyo and elsewhere. Japan's city pop drew its energy from this lively, "euphoric" urban activity. "The public spent lavishly on imported wine and liqour, luxury clothing, art, and international travel. Japanese nightlife, from flashy restaurants and hostess bars and glitzy bars and discotheques, was second to none. Japan needed a new soundtrack for this new lifestyle, and city pop was born," Eli Cohen, who helped assemble the "Tokyo Nights" album, told Vice.
This musical genre borrows from funk, soul, disco, lounge and even yacht rock. It mixes a number of references and influences, notably Asian and American. Iconic city-pop artists were inspired by the sounds of California bands like Buffalo Springfield and Little Feat. Tatsurō Yamashita even released an album consisting entirely of Beach Boys covers.