For me, it was Mariya smiling at me from the thumbnail with the title “Plastic Love” back in 2017. I’m probably not alone with this story but I’d love to read your stories of your intro to city pop.
The song Skylar Spence by Saint Pepsi samples Love Talkin’ in it. Once I’d listened to Skylar Spence a few times, I had gotten interested in what the sample was, so I looked it up, found it on YouTube (good luck with that now, thanks Tatsu. 😂), and immediately fell in love with the song. From there I kept listening to whatever city pop YouTube autoplay would throw at me. This was back in spring of 2018, by the way.
I feel I do that in the reverse order. I listen to future funk stuff and pick the samples. Only really started on Saint Pepsi a few months ago. Though I’ve done alright with Macross 82-99.
I use Last.fm and it’s so weird seeing Tats have such good numbers given how far out of your way you’ve gotta go to listen to his stuff.
I mean, good for him, but man does it suck for anyone new to the scene. There’s a pretty important and very personal story I have tied to my “discovery” of him and city pop as a whole, so I hate to imagine how things would’ve turned out if that story happened now when it’s a struggle to find him on YouTube. I know I wouldn’t have really tried anywhere else at that time. 😅 It’d be nice to have a physical collection one day, so I can see what all the hype’s about. 😂
For me it was the excellent Pacific Breeze compilations that the record label “Light in the Attic” have released. I’m sure I would have heard some city pop songs on some mixes beforehand too, I just don’t recall anything specific.
Which one’s your favourite?
Hard call but I’ll say the first one, particularly love L.A. Night by Yasuko Agawa but there’s so many great tracks across the compilations!
Good song. Did you see they did a third one this year?
Yes I did! I’ll have to get it on vinyl
