My daughter was listening to "Say So" by Doja Cat on YouTube. And I asked her to replay it because something sounded eerily familiar—as if I heard it before.

Turns out, it sounds remarkably similar to the future funk song "Fiona Coyne" by Skylar Spence. If you're unaware, future funk is a genre that originated in the 2010s. It's basically a mix of disco and vaporwave. It has its following, but never cracked the mainstream.

But hold on... "Fiona Coyne" is inspired by "Love Talkin' (Honey It's You)" by Tatsuro Yamashita, one of the heavyweights of city pop.

City pop is what's known as a retronym. That is, a label we give to music when a retrospective canon gets formed, requiring recontextualization. Yacht rock is another example of a retronym.

In Japan, where city pop originates from, city pop is an obscure genre even though city pop songs themselves are popular. That's because it was simply mainstream pop in Japan.

Now don't get me wrong. "City pop" as a term existed in Japan during the 80s. But this wasn't a genre with a defined musical structure. It was more a marketing term to sell aspiration, much like how we in the West hear terms like "contemporary" and "sophisti-pop". Because of this, most Japanese people didn't recognize city pop as an identifiable thing.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Westerners started hearing Japanese music from the 80s. They needed context. So they re-purposed a Japanese marketing term to define a corpus, a body of work that identified Japanese music with broad similarities that seemed to have an associated scene.

The city pop canon was never big in the West. Even now, it's only known amongst music nerds. But its effect on modern mainstream music is huge. Here's examples:

• "Out of Time" by The Weeknd samples Tomoko Aran's "Midnight Pretenders"
• "GONE, GONE / THANK YOU" by Tyler, the Creator interpolates Tatsuro Yamashita's "Fragile"
• "We Ride" by Brave Girls was a Top 5 K-pop hit, but it was blatantly marketed as city pop upon its release

What's wild? City pop is not the only obscure genre to impact the mainstream but never hit the mainstream. Witch house, phonk, and vaporwave all had a big impact. But none of the artists who originated these genres have ever become house house names.

I think this is one of the defining characteristics of 21st-century music. A genre can remain underground while its sounds, production techniques, and aesthetics become completely mainstream.

We're in a time where the mainstream raids from subculture before subculture can ever challenge it.

Is this why we no longer see musical revolutions like jazz, rock, punk, hip hop, and grunge?

Has the mainstream become so good at absorbing underground music that new genres can influence it without ever displacing or fundamentally transforming it?

Van Halen could sell out stadiums in the US, yet in Europe they had to open for Bon Jovi. That would never happen in the States.

DMB could easily sell out the biggest arena in my country (Portugal), but I doubt they have much of a fanbase in the rest of Europe. My dad is a huge fan of 70s rock, and he tells me Van Halen and Journey were never particularly big over here. And FUNNILY ENOUGH, he'd never even heard of Tom Petty...

The first track i heard was around the time i quit weed for good. It's also the first artist that made me like brass instruments.
I love Toh Kays songwriting yet i tend to forget about them ever so often. I feel my main problem is that the lyrics are often way to fast to sing along but they are so bloody good and interesting compared to other 3rd wave ska bands like Less Than Jake or Mad Caddys. Kinda feel like they are so underraded. It's not really Ska nor is it Skapunk. They are kinda unique and have such a bloody good brass section.
And now roast me :)

Like actually. I've spent the last two years making what I think is my life's greatest work, only to realise the world in which I live values this craft less and less. I mean I'm guilty of it too, listening to records just isn't what it used to be, but I try. Yet here we all are making them as though nothing has changed. How depressing! I don't mean to be dramatic, I know the fire will always burn, but it flickers now in the winds of time.