City Pop
City pop is a smooth, polished style of Japanese pop from the mid-1970s and 1980s that draws on American soft rock, funk, disco and jazz fusion.
Songs feature slick studio playing, bright synths, slap bass, horns and breezy vocals, with an urban, leisure-time mood linked to Japan's economic boom. The term was loose even at the time and covers many artists. It found a new worldwide audience in the late 2010s through YouTube recommendations, and it became a key sample source for vaporwave and future funk.
Artists it is known for: Tatsuro Yamashita, Mariya Takeuchi, Anri, Toshiki Kadomatsu.
- Family
- J-Pop & Anime
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- Japan, mid-1970s
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 2%
About 1,900 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have city pop among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
City Pop artists
Masayoshi Takanaka
Lamp
Anri
CASIOPEA
Makoto Matsushita
Miki Matsubara
Kingo Hamada
Taeko Onuki
Mariya Takeuchi
Masayuki Suzuki
The city pop artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.