Anri

City pop's eternal summer

Anri was born on August 31, 1961 in Yamato, Kanagawa Prefecture, and lives in Los Angeles. Her stage name is written 杏里, and she sings and writes songs in jazz, R&B, J-pop and city pop. She has said she grew up in a traditional Japanese family and found an outlet in the piano, and cites Olivia Newton-John, Joni Mitchell and Karen Carpenter. Her debut single "Olivia wo Kikinagara", written by Amii Ozaki, came out on November 5, 1978 when she was seventeen, with the album Apricot Jam the same year. For Life Records was her label through 2000, followed by Nippon Crown, Columbia, Universal Music, Warner Music Japan and, from 2013, IVY Records.

Heaven Beach (November 21, 1982) was her fourth album and the turning point, bringing the first songs by Toshiki Kadomatsu. Bi-Ki-Ni (June 1983) reached 27 on the Oricon chart, and Timely!! (December 1983), produced entirely by Kadomatsu, reached number 1 with "Cat's Eye", the opening theme of the anime of that name, and "Kanashimi ga Tomaranai" at 4. Boogie Woogie Mainland (1988) reached the top of the chart on some counts, with members of Toto and Ray Parker Jr. among the collaborators, and Circuit of Rainbow won Album of the Year at the 31st Japan Record Awards in 1989. In 1998 she sang "Furusato" at the closing ceremony of the Nagano Winter Olympics.

From the mid-2010s the overseas city pop revival, with vaporwave and future funk sampling and streaming, brought new listeners; Japanese Wikipedia says the Timely!! tracks passed 200 million combined plays by 2025, and she was featured on CNN's 2023 New Year's Eve special. Yokogao called her the lost princess of city pop. ANRI the BEST blue appeared on July 2, 2025, and the Heaven Beach tour runs in Japan from September to December 2026, with US dates earlier in the year at the Wiltern and the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles. Setlist.fm counts 111 setlists.