I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
It was a few years ago that I discovered the band Nulbarich which has been put alongside Suchmos and Yogee New Waves as one of the relatively new breed of Neo-City Pop bands, although perhaps they would rather be called something more on the lines of J-R&B. Anyways, Nulbarich's "Tokyo" from 2021 has that groove with some added synthpop.
Now, I'm going a bit earlier to their debut year of 2016 with "New Era" which was a track on their first album"Guess Who?". From the title, one might guess that the song could be about a better time for Earth and its citizens, but really, it's a whole lot more intimate with a man finally coming out of his shell to share love with that significant other for the first time in a while. There's that appealingly sunny funk and groove accompanying Jeremy "JQ" Quartus' soulful vocals.
I was up late last night on the computer when I heard the alarms go off on a major earthquake in Ishikawa Prefecture (6+ on the Shindo scale) with the aftershocks. At the time of this writing, it appears that there has been one death and a little over twenty people injured, so I am hoping that the citizens in the area are doing OK and handling any damage steadily.
In the last couple of months, I've noticed that drive-loving YouTuber J Utah has put up a number of videos showing him taking those journeys through Tokyo. As usual, they sure look lovely and even for a fellow like me who used to walk on those very streets everyday for years, his material has gotten me wishing for another trip back to the old stomping grounds. I can only imagine how folks who have never visited one of the largest metropoles on the planet but would love to go currently feel. Well, I've got three friends who are on the way there.
This music video of the band Nulbarich's "TOKYO" will just "exacerbate" those yearnings. Yup, it's a lovely shiny day in Tokyo...almost like how New York City was depicted in the 1998 movie "You've Got Mail" with Tom Hanks. If the mixture music of thrummy synthpop (kinda like the ambient noise of the city) and R&B by Nulbarich leader and singer-songwriter Jeremy "JQ" Quartus and happy images of Tokyoites going about their daily lives lend to that aura of feel-goodness, his lyrics also do relate that it's not all wine and roses. Perhaps it's more of a stable marriage between citizen and city with the usual ups and downs. Convenience vs. high monthly National Health Insurance premiums and city tax, the crowds vs. the vitality, the cool winters vs. the torrid summers, I can certainly relate to that.
"TOKYO" was released as a digital single in January 2021 and it was also a part of Nulbarich's 4th album"New Gravity" which came out in April that year and hit No. 14 on Oricon. The band debuted in 2016 and have so far released four albums, one mini-album, three EPs, one CD single, two vinyl singles, and fifteen digital singles. Nulbarich's sound has been informed by R&B, pop, rock and acid jazz (comparable to Suchmos) with song lyrics usually incorporating both Japanese and English according to this interview. As for the unusual name of the band, Nulbarich is a merging of the words "null but rich" meaning that one can still be satisfied despite having nothing.
