Voll

ALT the vibes-based listening that makes this kind of stuff possible is very much rooted in how city pop as a genre came to be & resurged in a reflective-, restorative- & hauntological-nostalgic cycle of cultural fetishization: first the influence of black american music (jazz, soul, r&b, funk, disco) on the conception of the genre (+ the direct involvement of black musicians such as augie johnson, tom tom 84 + the phenix horns in the making of its classics e.g. gravy, weekend fly to the sun, & postcard fantasy) as part of pre-bubble japan's occidentosis; secondly the domestic "rediscovery" of city pop in the 90s owing itself to japanese DJs using crate-digging & mixing techniques pioneered by 70s hip hop artists;

ALT thirdly the resurgence of city pop in the late 2010s + the rapid increase in its international listenership due to a combination of (1) some algorithmic quirk, (2) vaporwave production techniques popular around the same time decaying, dystopianizing, & effectively satirizing then-hypercommercialized city pop as a form of hauntology, with asian fetishism being a staple of its visual vocabulary in particular & (3) the nostalgia it almost uniformly evoked in the (western) listeners: possible reflective nostalgia because of the black american musical elements present in city pop that listeners were presumably already familiar with, & the restorative nostalgia (as seen by youtube comments expressing a desire to live in the time & place of city pop's "peak") built on a western fetishization of japan, ultimate "thing: japan" logic in light of its increasing soft power