40 Years Later, Japanese City Pop is Still Cr...

In case you missed it: How does a country of 10 million people dominate the global pop charts? From ABBA's Eurovision breakthrough to Max Martin's methodical hit-making, Sweden has quietly engineered a kind of musical Stockholm Syndrome: we've all become captives to their sound w ...  Show more

In the last episode of our feral pop miniseries, we take a look at the 22 year old rapper primed to take over the world: 2hollis. Splitting the difference between hardstyle and hip-hop while emanating an aura best described as “vampiric,” he’s been one of the most hyped musicians ...  Show more

Tokyo Boogie-Woogie: Japan's Pop Era and its Discontents (Harvard University Press, 2017) by Hiromu Nagahara is the first English-language history of the origins and impact of the Japanese pop music industry. The book connects the rise of mass entertainment, epitomized by ryūkōka ...  Show more

Back in 1989, Neneh Cherry released her debut album. Raw Like Sushi was a smash in the UK and here in Australia. This young Swede based in London caught all of our attention, and through the 90’s she’d release two more albums before taking a breather from music. But her creati ...

Memories of a prison camp in the Arizona desert, a tsunami and a plane crash are stirred by the bittersweet Japanese song Sukiyaki, a huge global hit of the 1960s.Originally released in Japan with the title 'Ue o Muite Arukou' ('I Look Up As I Walk'), the song was retitled 'Sukiy ...  Show more

Jake Newby of the substack Concrete Avalanche with an end of year ChinaTalk takeover! Here's his accompanying year in review post https://jakenewby.substack.com/p/2023-in-review?utm_source=activity_item Tracklist: Intro: 'Lost in China' (excerpt) – Tation 天声 (self-released) This ...  Show more