As promo for the big re-release of 8 of Tatsuro Yamashita's albums (I've got 'em on preorder), the record label made a new video for Tats' iconic Sparkle and put it on Youtube.
It's kind of a full circle moment because Sparkle was a noted "Youtube algorithm recommendation banger" along with Plastic Love (which Tatsuro produced for his wife, Mariya Takeuchi.)
It just appeared in your recs one day, and it was right, because there was this whole vein of 70s/80s pop that would probably appeal to a millennial, but that they were highly unlikely to know about unless they were Japanese.
Lately the Japanese record labels know people pass their stuff around, and contrary to the past, to their obsessive blocking and hiding and takedowns (can someone make Toei stop), you'll see Japanese labels put their stuff up on all the various music services. For this music, they lean into the "citypop aesthetic" fad. I really like this new video for Sparkle because while it takes the general palette and aesthetic (pastel tones, sun and sea), it does its own thing creatively rather than simply repeat known signifiers.
But speaking of known signifiers, I really like this too: VAP commissions new artwork for their citypop uploads in the "aesthetic". I feel like much of the "aesthetic" is basically retroactively clipped onto it now, after all? (It's like how the cover art for Plastic Love's re-release is now the Youtube thumbnail, even though that's cover art for a different album)
