City pop is the latest trend to hit Japan¡¯s indie-music scene. Well, not the musical style, just the words.
The term was originally used to describe an offshoot of the emerging Western-influenced ¡°new music¡± of the 1970s and ¡®80s. ¡°City pop¡± referred to the likes of Sugar Babe and Eiichi Ohtaki, artists who scrubbed out the Japanese influences of their predecessors and introduced the sounds of jazz and R&B ¡ª genres said to have an ¡°urban¡± feel ¡ª to their music.
Music journalist Yutaka Kimura, who has published a number of books on City Pop and its associated artists, defines the genre as ¡°urban pop music for those with urban lifestyles,¡± in his book ¡°Disc Collection: Japanese City Pop,¡± citing the band Happy End as ¡°ground zero¡± for the movement.
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