For those of you unfamiliar with the concept behind a “Short ver.” music video, let me fill you in in an effort to push physical sales of a DVD album tie-in release, Japanese labels will often share “Short ver.” music videos that give viewers a taste of the full video, promoting the idea that they should go buy the full release. Warner Music Japan uploading a “Short ver.” music video is blatantly tone deaf to the global movement that shot “Plastic Love” into the public eye once more. That’s all great, but this is where the biggest issue comes into play, and is something we’ve discussed quite recently. Directed by Kyotaro Hayashi, the music video showcases Tokyo in a manner that perfectly captures the sensibilities of the ’80s through a modern lens. Releasing an official music video 35 years after the songs initial release is an interesting move. Produced by her husband and fellow industry veteran Tatsuro Yamashita a full two years after their marriage, the song captivated an entire global audience during its resurgence. It was her first #1 album on the ORICON charts, and several cuts from that album remain a celebrated part of her expansive career to date. Those familiar with the song are probably also familiar with the bits of Engrish found throughout, including the outro which is entirely in Engrish.Originally released on April 25, 1984, Mariya Takeuchi’s seminal “Variety” was a major turning point for the then 29-year-old musician.
Seeing as it wasn’t one of Takeuchi’s most popular songs, to begin with, an interesting side-effect of this boom to popularity is that while the rest of the world is learning of the song for the first time, it essentially gets a second chance to be rediscovered in Japan as well, which is, perhaps, the unintentional meta-game of Vaporwave and Future Funk. Years later, we have grown up as consumers of Youtube and memes as a part of daily life, and when we hear an unlikely jam, we take it at face value.Ĭould it have been another song that was propelled to new popularity? Sure. With musical memes in the past like Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up, we were essentially “tricked” into clicking links with feigned disdain for having clicked on the link, however, it was the idea that we were tricked that actually brought about the grievance in this case many of us eventually came to the conclusion that Never Gonna Give You Up is actually a decent song.Ĭonsider that Rickrolling was merely the masses getting their first taste of the conveniences of streamable music, though in a rather quirky way.
The accessibility and convenience of Youtube make spreading a song like Plastic Love as easy as posting a link to a video. Memes tend to spread like a brushfire in windy conditions. Of course, there is also the fact that Vaporwave as a genre is seen as and feeds off of being a meme. The only difference is that with the emergence of City Pop due to in part Vaporwave culture, as well as Japanese culture as a whole, becoming more popular worldwide, the popularity of Mariya Takeuchi and Plastic Love has reached new audiences. Well, Mariya Takeuchi has always been an extremely popular artist – that is, in Japan. How did Plastic Love Become so Popular in recent years? This has been proved with numerous songs, but the one that truly sticks out for most right now is Plastic Love. However, an unexpected byproduct of the production of such music is the realization that the original tracks were excellent, to begin with.
The digital chopping board for such artists ends up producing pleasant results as they give old Japanese hooks a fresh, modern sound. In the process of this, they have come across hits within the City Pop genre that was rather popular in the time period where City Pop thrived during the 80s, but relatively unknown to foreign markets. Vaporwave and Future Funk artists scoured old hits for source material to sample in order to create the sounds and aesthetics associated with their genre. One of the most notorious recipients of this re-emerging City Pop phenomenon is, of course, Mariya Takeuchi’s 1984 hit Plastic Love. As advocates for and practitioners of Vaporwave as a culture rummaged through forgotten songs from Japan’s City Pop boom of the 1980s, they uncovered a number of hits that were given a second chance at worldwide acclaim.