My Religion

I used to think 80s pop was whatever MTV told me to care about. Nena, Billy Ocean, the safe hits. But the real thing was in Tokyo the whole time, played on car radios and in discos—Momoko Kikuchi, Takako Mamiya, Yukiko Okada. Women singing over the lightest possible disco arrangements about love, friendship, the ache of the city. The aesthetic was ruthlessly simple: stay buoyant, stay bright, don’t let anything heavy sneak in.

There was an unspoken rule across the whole scene. Weight meant death. Texture meant you missed the point. It was pure melodic pop with no pretense, built to last exactly one perfect listen and then burrow into your brain for years. Harder to pull off than it sounds.

I got obsessed with it the way people get obsessed with things they discover too late. I hunted albums, dug into discographies, tracked down every obscure B-side. City pop has this quality—listening feels like remembering a place you’ve never been, a time that isn’t yours. Which might be all pop music is anyway: borrowed memory.