Primer: What is Japanese City Pop?/DJ Notoya's Tokyo Bliss

 

The above AI Bing image was one of the first I concocted after throwing the title for Miki Matsubara's（松原みき）City Pop classic into the image creator. I hadn't been aware that begging that guy to stay with the lass at midnight involved luring him with McDonalds fries!

Anyways, my good wishes are belated but congratulations to "Mayonaka no Door"（真夜中のドアー）on its 45th anniversary which occurred last November. Apparently, y@suo ohtani had put out his own arrangement for the song via the official Miki Matsubara YouTube channel on the eve of the anniversary. However, I am using this space and time for something a bit more unusual, and it's to let City Pop fans know of a couple of media creations.

Once again, this first one is a belated affair but the music podcast "Primer" started its run last May with an episode devoted to Matsubara and her debut album "Pocket Park" from 1980. Host Christian Dueñas, music writer Yosuke Kitazawa and radio/tv presenter Linda Marigliano spend the better part of an hour discussing and enjoying the various tracks including the most famous one on it. A couple of days ago, I'd been looking for any sort of podcast to while away the time as I was typing something else when I stumbled upon "Primer" and enjoyed it quite a lot. I've also come across another several "Primer" episodes here as well, so why not give them a spin as well?

The second creation is actually the opposite of my discovery of "Primer" in that it has yet to be released. If the name DJ Notoya is familiar to you, then you probably own a copy of his City Pop compilation "Tokyo Glow" from 2021. And from there, I was able to find out about and post a few songs from that album such as Kumi Nakamura's（中村久美）"Kimagure"（気まぐれ）.

Well, this time around, a new DJ Notoya album is coming out on February 14th 2025 titled "Tokyo Bliss", and it is once again chock-filled with songs of the genre between 1974 and 1988. One of those tracks is Kumiko Sawada's（沢田久美子）"Your Love's Away". The only difference here is that "Tokyo Bliss" will just be the one LP or CD instead of the two-record set of "Tokyo Glow".