This is somewhat of a rewrite of a blog post I made a couple of years ago. But hey, outside the internet, things move at a normal pace, so two years isn't that long ʕ – ᴥ – ʔ. To set the tone, let me start with a video I made a while back:
Incredibly, this is the video that got the most views on my YouTube!
Hey, you, the unsuspecting reader, do you like elevator music? Well, I do! A while back, @gi_favetta sent me this incredible music video, and boy, this guy has so much energy! I couldn't help it, and after two days with Ginger Root's song LORETTA stuck in my head, I decided to make some fanart back then... which I recently remade, this time featuring some great artists I listen to quite a bit from a genre I didn't know existed until then called City Pop
In order: Mariya Takeuchi, Ginger Root, Anri, Tatsuro Yamashita, and Masayoshi Takanaka
This song made me realize that I was watching a lot of compilations of the musical genre called City Pop. From what I've gathered, it's a musical style that became quite famous in Japan in the 80s and was played heavily on taxi radios. And it seems like we're now experiencing a mini-resurgence of these songs through great anime dancing clips (which are really good, by the way)
These videos, completely sent by the algorithm, led me to a guy I really like, Masayoshi Takanaka, or as I like to call him, the happiest man in the world with his incredible SURFBOARD GUITAR, I ended up listening to a lot of his music in those lo-fi remix playlists until I found out who he really was
Seriously, I've never seen a guy so happy to buy a banana
From what I've discovered, the guy was one of the best guitarists in Japan, and a lot of his music has been sampled for lo-fi beats (speaking of which, I think lo-fi deserves a post here soon). And the coolest thing is that he came to Brazil to record this album, In one version of the back cover, he's with some amazing Brazilian samba musicians, like the great drummer Wilson das Neves, and some others whose names I can't remember right now. Talk about making the most of a trip to Brazil!
And thinking about it, it reminded me of an old theory I have that somewhere in Japan there must be an inverse Liberdade (which is a neighborhood most populated by Asian immigrants here in São Paulo) a place where there are reverse otakus who only want to play soccer, eat barbecue, and play samba...
But this musical genre isn't all about Takanaka... even though he's theoretically more on the jazz fusion side than City Pop (but I'm not a musician so I can't really speak to that). There are also other great artists mentioned above, like Anri, Mariya Takeuchi, Tatsuro Yamashita (who loves to take his music off the internet, doesn't he?), and the new resurgence of a style that was considered dead until a few days ago, Ginger Root, bringing back even the VHS cameras of the time to make his music videos. I love old stuff like that, and I'll let Gi Favetta's text speak for me on this link
Wow, I wrote a lot today! That's all for now, I'm looking forward to the resurgence of City Pop so I can listen to it in my car when I become an Uber driver. That's all, stay hydrated, eat bananas, and enjoy the beach safely, just like the great Takanaka ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ👍
Here's a random playlist to listen to while you do something
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