Plastic Love — Black-and-white close-up portrait of Mariya Takeuchi smiling with wind-swept hair

Plastic Love

1984viral songclassic

Published September 22, 2026

"Plastic Love" is a 1984 city pop single by Japanese singer-songwriter Mariya Takeuchi that sat forgotten for three decades before a YouTube reupload turned it into the unofficial anthem of the online city pop revival. The rediscovery pulled millions of listeners into 80s Japanese pop and fueled the future funk remix scene that grew around it.

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Overview

"Plastic Love" is a mid-tempo city pop track written and performed by Mariya Takeuchi, with production by her husband Tatsuro Yamashita. The song pairs a smooth 80s Tokyo groove with Takeuchi's soft delivery, which is why it slotted so cleanly into the 2010s online nostalgia for 80s Japanese pop1.

The song went from a deep cut to an internet fixation after YouTube's recommendation engine started pushing a fan-uploaded version to listeners who had never heard of Takeuchi or city pop2. It became a gateway track: people who clicked once tended to follow the algorithm down a rabbit hole of 80s J-pop, and the song made a lot of listeners into fans of 70s, 80s and 90s J-pop4. It also became one of the most-sampled sources for future funk, a subgenre of vaporwave built on chopped and sped-up 80s disco and city pop3.

On 4chan's /mu/ board, threads about Takeuchi and specifically "Plastic Love" turn up regularly, often paired with fan art of the singer circulated on DeviantArt and Tumblr3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Record release (1984) / YouTube (viral spread, 2017)
Creator
Mariya Takeuchi
Date
1984

"Plastic Love" was recorded for Mariya Takeuchi's comeback album VARIETY, released on April 25, 1984, which hit #1 on the Oricon chart in Japan that year3. The song was later pulled as a single on March 25, 1985 and reached #85 on Oricon, a modest showing that gave no hint of what would happen thirty years later3.

Takeuchi did not create the meme around the song, only the song itself. The viral second life belongs to a different creator: a YouTube user named Plastic Lover, who reuploaded a seven-minute version of the track on July 5, 2017 using a portrait of Takeuchi from her "Sweetest Music / Morning Glory" single sleeve as the video's still image1. An earlier upload by user Sona main was taken down before the song caught fire3.

How It Spread

Future funk producers were pulling from "Plastic Love" well before the mainstream YouTube boom. On March 11, 2016, the music channel Artzie Music posted a Night Tempo remix of the track that pulled in more than 2.4 million views5. A second remix by TARA followed on September 8, 2016 via Funky Panda, with about 76,000 views by the following year3.

The song crossed over from niche remix scenes to a wider audience in mid-2017. It was posted to Reddit's /r/listentothis on June 21, 2017, where it collected 3,937 upvotes3. Two weeks later, on July 5, 2017, the Plastic Lover reupload landed on YouTube and the recommendation algorithm did the rest. The video was past 5.33 million views by January 20181, and Urban Dictionary entries from that era describe the video sitting above 51 million views on YouTube's recommended feeds4.

Beyond the numbers, the song reshaped what casual listeners knew about 80s Japanese music. It became the reference point for the online city pop revival, the go-to demo track for future funk edits, and a running subject on /mu/ threads about Takeuchi's back catalog3.

Timeline

1984-04-25

Mariya Takeuchi's album VARIETY is released and reaches #1 on Oricon, with "Plastic Love" as an album track.

1985-03-25

"Plastic Love" is issued as a standalone single, peaking at #85 on Oricon.

2016-03-11

Artzie Music posts Night Tempo's future funk remix of the song, which passes 2.4 million YouTube views.

2016-09-08

Funky Panda uploads TARA's remix of "Plastic Love," reaching around 76,000 views.

2017-06-21

The song is shared on Reddit's /r/listentothis, collecting 3,937 upvotes.

2017-07-05

YouTube user Plastic Lover uploads a seven-minute version with the "Sweetest Music / Morning Glory" cover art, the upload that drives the viral second life.

2018-01

The Plastic Lover video passes 5.33 million views, making the song the entry point for a wider city pop revival.

How to Use This Meme

"Plastic Love" typically shows up online in three ways: as the Plastic Lover YouTube upload passed around as an entry point to city pop, as source material chopped into future funk edits (common convention is to loop the chorus over a four-on-the-floor beat and speed it up a few BPM), and as a soundtrack layered under vaporwave-style video edits of 80s Tokyo footage or anime clips.

Frequently Asked Questions