"Plastic Love" is a song released by Japanese singer Mariya Takeuchi. The song was included on Takeuchi's 1984 album, Variety, and also released as a single a year later. The single, embodying the city pop style, was moderately received and sold around 10,000 copies. In 2017, the song saw a resurgence internationally when an eight-minute remix of the song was uploaded to YouTube, quickly garnering more than 24 million views, before a copyright claim over the album art unintentionally led to its removal. It was subsequently restored in 2019 and has garnered over 35 million views.
Production and release
"Plastic Love" was written and performed by Takeuchi and produced by her husband, Tatsuro Yamashita. In an interview with The Japan Times, Takeuchi remarked: "I wanted to write something danceable, something with a city pop sound... tell the story of a woman who lost the man she truly loves." Yamashita also played guitar for the song, while Yasuharu Nakanishi played electric piano, Kōki Itō played bass guitar, and Jūn Aoyama played drums. The song was first released on Takeuchi's 1984 album, Variety. A twelve-inch single was released on March 15, 1985, which included an "extended club mix" and "new re-mix" of the song and reached 86th on the Oricon Singles Chart.
Resurgence
On July 5, 2017, an eight-minute remix of "Plastic Love" was uploaded to YouTube by a user known as "Plastic Lover". The video showed a cropped version of the cover of Takeuchi's earlier single "Sweetest Music", taken by Los Angeles-based photographer Alan Levenson. Coinciding with the vaporwave genre's rise in popularity, the video spread rapidly throughout YouTube through the platform's recommendations algorithm. Its spread was also aided by internet memes, discussions on Reddit, and fan art of the "Sweetest Music" cover on platforms such as DeviantArt. The video garnered 24 million views before being taken down for a copyright dispute with Levenson, but was then restored in 2019 with credit given to Levenson in the video description. Ryan Bassil of Vice noted that the song is "a rare tune that doesn't exactly need words to expertly describe a specific, defined feeling – one of lust, heartbreak, love, fear, adventure, loss, all caught up in the swirling midst of a night out on the town" and called the song "the best pop song in the world". On May 16, 2019, an official music video produced by Kyōtaro Hayashi was released on YouTube. Multiple cover versions of "Plastic Love" also exist, including one by Tofubeats and another by Friday Night Plans.
Twelve-inch single
A twelve-inch single was released on March 15, 1985, which included an "extended club mix" and "new re-mix" of the song. The single was Takeuchi's twelfth single released.
