History Music / MariyaTakeuchi

** Several of her songs have this, especially in the chorus. Takeuchi ''can'' speak it extremely well, so any English in her songs is guaranteed to be both grammatically correct and pronounced almost flawlessly.

* [[NeverAcceptedInHisHometown Never Accepted In Her Hometown]]: "Plastic Love" placed No. 85 originally in Japan's Oricon. Although renewed interest among foreigners rocketed it to No. 5, this is due to foreign interest and it still remains a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyNZcaVDypI non-noteworthy song]] in Japan save for the Mariya Takeuchi super fans.
* NostalgiaFilter: The young listeners of "Plastic Love" or other City Pop hits regularly have the same wistful, "rose-tinted glasses" sentiment of feeling [[FanOfThePast weirdly nostalgic]] over [[TheEighties an era]] that many of them... late Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z... were [[BeforeMyTime too young or born too late]] to experience. It's like an inverse of the FleetingDemographicRule. Wordsmiths have actually coined a neologism for this phenomenon: [[https://jwbarlament.medium.com/anemoia-nostalgia-for-a-time-you-never-knew-ebbe757799bc "Anemoia"]].

* NostalgiaFilter: The young listeners of "Plastic Love" or other City Pop hits regularly have the same wistful, "rose-tinted glasses" sentiment of feeling weirdly nostalgic over [[TheEighties an era]] that many of them... late Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z... were [[BeforeMyTime too young or born too late]] to experience. It's like an inverse of the FleetingDemographicRule. Wordsmiths have actually coined a neologism for this phenomenon: [[https://jwbarlament.medium.com/anemoia-nostalgia-for-a-time-you-never-knew-ebbe757799bc "Anemoia"]].

* SurprisinglyGoodEnglish: Would you expect anything less from a woman who won a national recitation contest? She was also an exchange student, which allowed her to learn English as a second language. In fact, here's her comedically [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icKXHtcvDTY interviewing]] famous actor and fellow singer Tetsuya Takeda in perfect English.

Mariya Takeuchi (竹内 まりや) (born March 20th 1955) is a Japanese SingerSongwriter signed to Moon Records, currently owned by Warner Music Group, who is best known for being one of ''the'' defining voices of the "CityPop" movement in TheEighties-- think 60's Western rock-&-roll mixed with some funk or jazz, and you'll have kind of an idea of the genre she tends to work in. She is one of the best-selling female artists in Japan with a career spanning over 40 years.

She is from [[CountryMouse ultra-rural Shimane Prefecture]] in far-west Honshu, the third daughter of an innkeeping family. Despite such a rural lifestyle, her family loved music and she quickly took a liking to Western songs, especially Music/TheBeatles, and used that to broaden her horizons. She spent her final year of high school in Illinois under an international exchange program. Shortly after she returned to Japan and enrolled in Keio University (where she majored in English Literature), she was one of two winners of a 1974 English recitation contest sponsored by ''The Japan Times''.[[labelnote:*]] That's Japan's longtime English-language newspaper. Also, that contest was always intended to have one boy and one girl win. The prize was a trip to Hawaii.[[/labelnote]] In other words, unlike most Japanese singers past or present, she's near-fluent in English. Despite this, she has said she never felt any need to branch out worldwide even though she could have easily done so.

[[caption-width-right:350:Mariya Takeuchi in 1980, originally used for the single "Sweetest Music" containing "Plastic Love".
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[[caption-width-right:350:Mariya Takeuchi in 1980\\

* GratuitousEnglish: Several of her songs have this, especially in the chorus. Takeuchi ''can'' speak it extremely well, so any English in her songs is guaranteed to be both grammatically correct and pronounced almost flawlessly.

* NostalgiaFilter: The young listeners of "Plastic Love" or other City Pop hits regularly have the same wistful, "rose-tinted glasses" sentiment of feeling weirdly nostalgic over [[TheEighties an era]] that many of them... late Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z... were [[BeforeMyTime too young or born too late]] to appreciate. It's like an inverse of the FleetingDemographicRule. Wordsmiths have actually coined a neologism for this phenomenon: [[https://jwbarlament.medium.com/anemoia-nostalgia-for-a-time-you-never-knew-ebbe757799bc "Anemoia"]].

* NeverAcceptedInHisHometown: "Plastic Love" placed No. 85 originally in Japan's Oricon. Although renewed interest among foreigners rocketed it to No. 5, this is due to foreign interest and it still remains a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyNZcaVDypI non-noteworthy song]] in Japan save for the Mariya Takeuchi super fans.

* NeverAcceptedInHisHometown: "Plastic Love" placed No. 85 originally in Japan's Oricon. Although renewed interest among foreigners rocketed it to No. 5, this is due to foreign interest and it still remains a non-noteworthy song in Japan save for the Mariya Takeuchi super fans.