The Best City Pop Albums of the '80s

Her husband Tatsuro Yamashita produced and arranged the whole thing, which is the standing joke of city pop's streaming era: he is everywhere as a producer and nearly absent as an artist. Spotify offers only the 30th Anniversary Edition, padded out with karaoke takes and two 12-inch mixes. プラスティック・ラブ — Plastic Love — walks in on a clipped guitar figure and never once raises its voice.

Careful with this edition — CAT'S EYE carries a (NEW TAKE) tag, and Remember Summer Days, a 1984 recording, has been bolted on as an eleventh track. Untouched is WINDY SUMMER: slap bass, brass stabs and a chorus that lands twice as fast as the verse prepares you for. The rest is the sound of Tokyo session players being paid properly.

Dates disagree here: Japanese sources put the LP in 1984, while Spotify dates its copy 1983 and carries a 1983 copyright line credited to Kadomatsu himself. Either way it is where his guitar stops being polite. Airport Lady rides a sixteenth-note hi-hat and a bass part that refuses to sit still, with horn charts arranged tight enough to cut yourself on.

Spotify's only edition is titled cliche (Mastered by Bernie Grundman), and its copyright line splits the year — 1981 for tracks one and ten, 1982 for everything between. 黒のクレール opens the album and returns as a reprise to close it: a two-chord vamp with the strings set high and the drums pushed almost apologetically back. European in posture, Japanese in personnel.

Niagara pop rather than city pop proper, and the border is worth stating plainly: Ohtaki was chasing Phil Spector's wall of sound while everyone around him chased Steely Dan. 君は天然色 stacks handclaps, sleigh bells and a piano triplet under a melody that never comes back down. Spotify's edition is dated 2021 and carries a Niagara Enterprises copyright line.

Forty years after barely anyone bought it, the internet pushed Mayonaka no Door / Stay With Me to the top of Spotify's Global Viral 50 in December 2020. The album around that single is tougher than it suggests, and Matsubara's jazz-organ background shows in the comping. Spotify dates this edition 2009 and appends a Club Mix as a twelfth track.

Joji sampled Midnight Pretenders on Yeah Right in 2018 and a whole generation met Aran backwards. Warner Music Japan's 1983 copyright still sits on this edition, which keeps the original nine-track running order rather than the 2022 restored version Spotify also stocks. The song is suspended chords and a bassline that steps down every time you expect it to hold.

One album and then nothing — Mamiya never made a second, which is most of why original pressings trade for what they do. Universal's reissue keeps the 1982 copyright, credits 間宮貴子 and titles the album LOVE TRIP. 真夜中のジョーク is where to start: a walking bassline, a Rhodes that never takes a solo, and a vocal pitched two degrees cooler than the arrangement is asking for.

Victor put it out in 1986 and it went nowhere until crate-diggers and an autoplay algorithm found it three decades later. Dress Down is the reason: slow boogie, snare set well back in the room, a synth bass carrying most of the melodic weight and Akimoto phrasing behind the beat throughout. Spotify also stocks a 2021 remaster as Cologne+1; this is the plain one.

An idol record whose session band plainly refused to treat it as one, with VAP's 1986 copyright on the label. Mystical Composer is the standout — a minor-key groove with fretless bass running under the chorus and brass punched in on the offbeats. Spotify carries two 1986-dated editions with different track IDs and different title renderings; this is the romanised one.

EMI Japan's copyright reads 1984, and Nakahara wrote her own material at a time when most of her chart contemporaries were handed theirs. 君たちキウイ・パパイア・マンゴーだね。 has the daftest title on this list and the sharpest arrangement on the album, a fast shuffle with a horn section answering every vocal line. Border case: it leans nearer bright kayokyoku than to boogie.

A debut, and an unusually composed one. Just a Joke is the cut that travels: a clipped guitar chank on the upbeat, a synth-brass line doubling the hook, and a vocal that deliberately under-sings the whole arrangement. Spotify's copy is the 2013 Sony reissue rather than the 1983 original, so the year printed on the page is wrong by three decades.

Seattle's Light In The Attic has its name on this edition, whose phonogram line reads 2019 — which tells you the audience for a Japanese pop-fusion band of 1983 now sits mostly outside Japan. Summer Breeze, the title track, runs on a two-bar guitar figure and stacked harmonies, and the album barely changes tempo across ten songs. Border case: AOR with a Tokyo accent.