Mariya Takeuchi's Variety album (the one with “Plastic Love”) finally hits streaming services worldwide

Somebody over in Japan finally saw sense and released City Pop queen Mariya Takeuchi's 6th studio album Variety to streaming services worldwide.

Variety was released to streaming back in November, the same month Warner Music finally decided to officially upload “Plastic Love” to YouTube as music video (which doesn't feature Mariya herself). But it was released on the sly. I saw no announcement. I don't believe that there was a fax. I only knew the album was on streaming because I just happened to search ‘Plastic Love’ on Spotify and saw the bitch actually pop up.

I find this so weird. But I don't know know, because...Japan.

Warner Music know that “Plastic Love” is hugely popular online and has impacted city pop music culture in a huge way retrospectively. And yet, there was no big announcement of the album the song features on finally hitting streaming. And the music video didn't even feature Mariya herself. Even if she'd said ‘I don't wanna be involved’, surely Warner Music could've uploaded some archive footage from a performance or something, given there are so few videos on YouTube of Mariya performing the song.

Japan and it's lack of digital preservation is wild.

Variety is the album that most probably know for “Plastic Love”, and I wonder if most even know what album the song even features on. Or if they even care about the rest of the album. Just don't go into Variety expecting to hear a bunch of songs like “Plastic Love”. The album title ain't no lie. You get a variety of different styles of songs. And as much as I adore “Plastic Love”, it's certainly not the best song on the album. 

The version of Variety that has been released to streaming is the 30th anniversary edition, which features additional mixes of “Plastic Love”, the official instrumental and a previously unreleased song. Earlier this year we saw the 30th anniversary release of Request hit streaming. So perhaps this is the theme under which we'll see all of Mariya's albums hit streaming over the next couple of years, in a similar fashion to Mariah Carey's #MC30.

Hopefully her husband, the king of city pop Tatsuro Yamashita's discography will follow suit next. Oh. And in case you don't know, he also produced “Plastic Love” and the entire Variety album.

Apple Music strangely has 7 of Mariya's studio albums in total, everything from her debut right up until Request - where-as Spotify and YouTube Music at time of writing only have Variety and its follow-up album Request. Apple Music has fucked up with the categorisation though. So if you struggle to find Variety, it'll be because it's listed under Compilations.

🔊 Mariya Takeuchi's Variety on streaming: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music