Happy Lunar New Year, and welcome to the first installment of Latest Roundup! I’m so happy you’re here :) Read on for this week’s track listing and commentary, and click on the image below to listen to LR1.
1. “Plastic Love - 12” Extended Club Remix” by Mariya Takeuchi
“Plastic Love” was my first encounter with city pop, a Japanese genre of R&B/jazz/disco-influenced pop that peaked in the ‘80s. I found it on YouTube in the fall of 2017, and I was one of many — a Pitchfork article from 2021 sums up the phenomenon nicely:
"One of the most explosive Japanese YouTube recommendation hits in recent memory is ‘Plastic Love,’ Mariya Takeuchi’s 1984 disco-funk track about trying to dance away heartache. Selling a modest 10,000 copies upon release, the song suddenly spiked in popularity after an anonymous user named ‘Plastic Lover’ uploaded an eight-minute version onto YouTube in July 2017… Nearly every young city pop fan I’ve talked to has cited ‘Plastic Love’ as their gateway to the genre, and the YouTube algorithm as their route. Surprisingly, the song wasn’t available on Spotify until two months ago.”
Chillingly, this was my exact experience with the song. But today I’m recommending a 12” club version of it, which I came across for the first time last week while on a city pop kick. I was immediately enthralled — my mouth was actually hanging open for like the first four minutes of the song. This remix does a fantastic job of creating tension and reworking some of the song’s signature elements while preserving the integrity (for the most part) of the original version and showcasing all of its best parts. My favorite part is at 2:37, when we segue into the original version’s intro with a fantastic twangy guitar thrown in.
Unfortunately, two minutes later it all starts going downhill. There’s tacky disc-scratching and then some questionable splicing of vocals that eventually becomes downright silly… at one point it becomes so nonsensical that I actually laughed out loud. It’s like someone gave a trigger-happy baby access to the sample pad. That being said, I still recommend the song! Just with some fair warning.
2. “Vida De Cachorro” by Os Mutantes
Speaking of silly, take a look at the album cover on this one… anyway, this sweet little dog-themed love song by legendary tropicália band Os Mutantes came to me through my sister Michelle. The mixing for the vocals and the guitar is alarmingly loud at times but I kind of like the way it sounds like it’s about to blow tf out.
3. “Bossa Antique” by Lalo Schifrin
My dad introduced me to this quirky album over the holidays by calling it one of the few albums he can listen to on repeat, forever, so of course I had to listen to it. Lalo Schifrin is a five-time Grammy award-winner and the composer of many film scores, including the Mission Impossible theme song; he’s worked with the likes of Stan Getz, Luiz Bonfá, and Dizzy Gillespie, to name a few, and his discography is so long that it has its own Wikipedia page.
This track is the final song on the album, intriguingly titled The Dissection and Reconstruction of Music From the Past as Performed By the Inmates of Lalo Schifrin’s Demented Ensemble as a Tribute to the Memory of the Marquis De Sade. It blends jazz and classical music in bright and unexpected ways, and I highly recommend it in its entirety, especially if you’re throwing a dinner party.
4. “TV Dinners” by MJ Lenderman
Sometimes, especially in contemporary indie songs, I find a steel guitar sounds out of place, like it’s calling too much attention to itself. But it blends perfectly with the rest of the elements on this track, which I’ve been listening to on repeat for weeks now.
5. “She’s An Easy Rider” by Tucker Zimmerman
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a song about a lady motorcyclist before, but this one is particularly good. I’m a big fan of whatever synth-y organ-y sound is happening in the background. (Anyone wanna educate me on what that instrument might actually be? Or any lady motorcyclist songs I should know? I humbly direct you to the comments section of this newsletter.)
I didn’t know much about this artist so I did a little research — his Wikipedia page notes that Tony Visconti, who famously worked on David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy, produced his first album. Apparently that’s one of Bowie’s favorite albums, too. This information was very interesting to me as a formerly-Bowie-obsessed-16-year-old…don’t be surprised if Tucker Zimmerman ends up on future LR playlists.
6. “I’ll Be You” by The Replacements
“Lonely… I guess that’s where I’m from.” OOF! Boy do I love The Replacements. This track convinced me that they’re basically edgy Bruce Springsteen — the guttural “hey!” at the end of the song in particular sealed the deal for me. I listened to this at least three times a day for a week straight and it still didn’t get old.
7. “2You” by Nicolas Duque
Brilliant repurposing of the refrain from “So Into You” by Tamia for this garage track from Colombian producer Nicolas Duque. Mentally I’m shaking my ass rn.
8. “Roadside Flowers” by Cui Tai Jing
It was very tricky tracking down this artist and this track name in English because it’s exclusively in Chinese on Spotify, and I can’t highlight/copy text on Spotify. Luckily my friend Anita speaks some Chinese and was able to find this artist’s Wikipedia page for me — thanks Anita! From what I could gather, Cui Tai Jing (or Taijing, or Tai-Jing, depending on where you look) was a Taiwanese teen superstar singer and TV show host until she dropped from the limelight in the ‘90s to practice Buddhism. Eventually she was baptized as Catholic and changed her name to Louise Tsuei. I discovered this song because someone I follow but don’t personally know on IG posted it to their stories, and it’s carried me through many walks around the city since.
9. “The Video Dept.” by The Radio Dept.
BOY do I love The Radio Dept.! I first heard them through my older sister Raquel at the tender age of 10 before encountering them on the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette biopic. Appropriately, I discovered this song a couple weeks ago on one of Raquel’s playlists. Swedish dream pop… need I say more?
10. “I Wish You Love, Pt. 1” by Joe Bataan
Rounding out this week’s playlist is a rec from another one of my sisters lol! Marina showed me this really beautiful track from what Spotify calls “the originator of the New York Latin soul that paralleled Latin boogaloo and anticipated disco,” featuring wistful lyrics about love lost purely to circumstance (swoon). “Pt. 2” is a lot less wistful and a lot more danceable.
Phew! What did you think of the first Latest Roundup? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the music, and of course, your thoughts on everything else — formatting, tone, if I’m writing too much or too little... I’m still figuring out what works and looks best, so send over those suggestions! (I’m begging you.)
The next newsletter goes out in two weeks. THANK YOU FOR READING! and thanks for bearing with me <3
I just came into my apartment singing bruce springsteen and joseph started talking about how the replacements are like an alt bruce. You aren't the only one convinced. His example was "left of the dial"
love it!!! great playlist (added a few to my monthly playlist) and rly enjoyed ur writing. i like hearing about why u like certain songs, maybe incorporating more of ur personal history or the song history into it could be cool bc i like hearing ur thoughts <3