If you’re one of the millions of people who’s seen Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love” hovering in your YouTube recommendations, you probably k

Talking to the Anonymous YouTuber and the Photographer Who Helped Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love” Go Viral

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2021-05-24 03:30:08

If you’re one of the millions of people who’s seen Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love” hovering in your YouTube recommendations, you probably know about Plastic Lover. In 2017, the anonymous account uploaded an extended version of the 1984 Japanese pop song to YouTube, and in the process helped catalyze a global obsession with the funky, carefree genre known as city pop.

Part of why “Plastic Love” got stuck in the YouTube algorithm has to do with the video’s thumbnail photo, a wistful black-and-white headshot of Takeuchi taken from a different single. This same picture is ultimately what led to the video’s removal from the site in 2018, after the photographer, Alan Levenson, filed a copyright strike—not Mariya Takeuchi’s record label, as one might imagine. Months later, Levenson and Plastic Lover came to an understanding, and the video was restored with proper attribution, now reaching 63 million views.

This is more or less the account you’ll find online, from the “Plastic Love” Wikipedia page to The Japan Times. None of Plastic Lover’s information is publicly accessible, which has made additional context hard to come by. But at the beginning of this year, I obtained their email from STEVEM, a Japanese animation and music YouTuber who also helped facilitate their initial contact with Levenson. I asked to chat; months passed with no reply. Then in mid-April, I found an apology from Plastic Lover in my inbox. “I’m so, so sorry,” they wrote. “I’ve been extremely busy with college.”

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