Tatsuro Yamashita, Mariya Takeuchi, Anri ~ Showa Era City Pop Resonates with Generation Z! Why These Classics of Yesteryear Have Garnered Such Attention, Part 1

 

Yeah, I realize that the above title will most likely go down as the longest one for an article in "Kayo Kyoku Plus" history, but that's what the translation for the original title amounts to. What am I talking about? Well, last night I encountered this article which was published in a journal, "Shuukan Josei PRIME"（週刊女性PRIME...Women's Weekly Prime）, and then brought onto my Mixi account. 

The article goes into what has made City Pop so popular with the current young generation although this rather goes against what Masa experienced when he asked a bunch of youth in Shibuya about the genre earlier this summer. Regardless, I've decided to translate the whole article and divide the translation into three parts over the weekend because: 1) of course, I am a huge fan of the genre and I've also been interested in the reaction to its flourishing over the past few years in Japan and abroad, and 2) the setting is Shibuya's Tower Records, one of my beloved destinations to visit in Tokyo for many years. It's a guarantee that as long as that familiar building stays open, I will visit it again and again during my next vacation there.

So, why don't we begin then? The translation begins under the following photo.

The 6th floor of Shibuya's Tower Records in Tokyo. Given the name of Tower Vinyl Shibuya, there are rows upon rows of analog records on display here (J-Canuck: the 6th floor used to be where the classical CDs were sold). 

The Young People of Generation Z Buying Analog Records

Tsuyoshi Tanoue of the Shibuya branch of Tower Records explains it so. "It was just one year ago that this floor was created to meet the demands of the expanding old/used record market. Even just at this branch, sales of records have increased 10-fold. Before the pandemic, foreign customers went into a tizzy and bought an incredible amount of Japanese pop albums. Those included a large number of Americans, Europeans and Asians. Overall sales of analog records at this branch went up 10%~15% compared to last year. I have no doubt that City Pop was one trigger behind this.

Five years ago, Tatsuro Yamashita's 1982 "For You" album sold for around 7,000 yen but now it sells for over 10,000 yen. Anri's 1983 "Timely!!" was just 2,000 yen but it's now going for 7,000~8,000 yen."

If you look around the store, you can see young people and female customers mixed in with middle-aged and older people. Why in the world have famous Showa Era songs, many of which are City Pop, gotten another look?

Music critic and radio personality Suzi Suzuki remarks "There is an index known as the Global Viral Charts which shows how often songs have been replayed on the music distribution service Spotify, and up to around three years ago, Miki Matsubara's debut single "Stay with Me" from 1979 was notable for having spent 18 straight days at No. 1 there and thus it spread across the world before we knew it. That was probably one factor".

This song has now gone beyond the 100 million replay mark on Spotify. Suzi says this is a modern phenomenon.

"One point is online music distribution and YouTube. Unlike before, there's no need to buy media such as CDs to easily listen to music from around the world. Because this environment had come about, music lovers all over the world discovered this special kind of music called City Pop and found it fascinating".

Stay tuned for Part 2.