Plastic Love

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About

"Plastic Love" is a 1984 J-pop song performed by Japanese singer/songwriter Mariya Takeuchi (竹内まりや). She and the song later became popular online when the song resurfaced on YouTube.

Origin

The song originated from her comeback album VARIETY (cover below, left), released April 25th, 1984.^[1] It was one of her most successful albums in her career, reaching #1 on the 1984 Oricon music chart in Japan.^[2] "Plastic Love" (cover below, right) was later released as a single on March 25th, 1985,^[3] and was #85 on Oricon.^[2]

Spread

The song was posted on YouTube by user Sona main, but the video was later taken down. User Plastic Lover reuploaded a seven minute version of the song on July 5th, 2017, featuring a picture of Takeuchi from her "Sweetest Music / Morning Glory" single cover.^[4] The video has gained more than 5.33 million views as of January 2018.

The song has surged in popularity online. Before its initial removal, the video was posted on the /r/listentothis subreddit on June 21st, 2017 with 3937 upvotes (as of January 2018).^[5] It's also a popular source for future funk, a subgenre of Vaporwave, remixes. On March 11th, 2016, music channel Artzie Music released a remix of the song by future funk artist Night Tempo, garnering over 2.4 million views. Another remix by TARA was uploaded by Funky Panda on September 8th, 2016, gaining 76,000 views.

Takeuchi has also garnered significant attention online, along with fan art from sites such as DeviantArt and Tumblr. ^[6]^[7] Threads about Takeuchi and specifically "Plastic Love" often appear on 4chan's /mu/ board.^[8]^[9]