City Pop One TokyoCity Pop One Tokyo

City Pop One has been driving since 19 July 2020, programmed by DJ Allie and DJ White Velvet for m·radio in Fukuoka. The premise is fixed and the station never breaks it: ten-song sets ripped from Showa-era vinyl, sequenced for the hour when you get in the car to clear your head and end up crossing the same bridges twice over. Tokyo is the first of four routes — Seoul, Los Angeles and Taipei each get a channel of their own — and a looping night-drive video runs underneath it.

The records are the real thing rather than the algorithm's version of it. A recent hour ran Noriko Miyamoto's Mild Connection, Miki Matsubara, Chocolate Lips, Ken Kobayashi and Jadoes, with Toshinobu Kubota and Junichi Inagaki queued behind them — 1981 to 1988, the boogie and AOR end of the catalogue rather than the two or three songs that went viral.