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Japanese singer-songwriter and producer Tatsuro Yamashita (February 4, 1953) is often credited with pioneering a genre known as "City Pop," a sophisticated blend of adult contemporary music and soft rock that enjoyed great popularity in Japan in the 1980s. Born in the district of Ikebukuro, Tokyo, he began performing with the band Sugar Babe alongside Taeko Ohnuki and Kunio Muramatsu. After releasing the band's first and only album, 1975's Songs, he signed with RCA and kicked off his solo career the next year, releasing the LP Circus Town. Following the warm reception of 1979's Moonglow, Tatsuro Yamashita finally achieved mainstream commercial success with Ride on Time, which topped the Oricon charts in 1980. Released in 1983, his chart-topping eighth album Melodies included the track "Christmas Eve," a song that eventually became a Christmas classic in Japan and also the best-selling Japanese single of the 1980s. In subsequent years, many of Tatsuro Yamashita's albums would reach Number 1 on the Oricon Albums Chart, including Pocket Music (1986), Boku no Naka no Shounen (1988), Artisan (1991), Cozy (1998), and Ray of Hope (2011), as well as the compilations Treasures (1995), Rarities (2002), and Opus (All Time Best 1975-2012) (2012). Softly, his fourteenth album, appeared in 2022.
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