Mariya Takeuchi

Japanese pop mastermind Mariya Takeuchi was born on March 20, 1955, in Taisha, Shimane (now the city of Izumo) in Japan and has enjoyed a fruitful four-decades-long career as a singer and songwriter. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, she recorded five albums and a variety of singles, including "Heart to Heart", which was co-written by Roger Nichols and featured on her 1980 album Miss M. An English version of the track, retitled as "Now", was recorded by the Carpenters and released in 1983. In 1982, Takeuchi married fellow musician Tatsuro Yamashita, and the pair began a prolific and respected songwriting partnership. Famed for her trailblazing work in Japan's city pop genre, outside of Japan, Takeuchi is best known for the breezy pop gem "Plastic Love", which was featured on her chart-topping 1984 album Variety. In the mid-late 2010s, the track enjoyed a new lease of life when it was uploaded to YouTube and adopted by the Internet-borne vaporwave community and its city pop-sampling subgenre future funk. The track was also remixed by popular US DJ and producer The Blessed Madonna in 2017. Aside from the unprecedented popularity of "Plastic Love", Takeuchi has scored eight Top 10 hit singles in Japan as a singer-songwriter, including 1989's "Single Again", 1990's "Kokuhaku" and 1994's "Junai Rhapsody". She has 12 studio albums under her belt, including 1994's best-selling compilation, Impressions, and 2014's Trad.