In 1980, Japanese electro-pop band Yellow Magic Orchestra went on Soul Train to play a version of Archie Bell & the Drells’ R&B classic “Tighten Up.” After the performance, the show’s host Don Cornelius said that if anyone out there was confused about what they just saw, well, he didn’t know either. It’s a funny moment—a stage full of Japanese musicians playing a synthed-out version of an old, funky R&B song with precision and deep musical faithfulness—but it also highlights just how visionary the band was. Formed in Tokyo in 1978, YMO—at its core, the trio of Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi, and Ryuichi Sakamoto—wasn’t just one of the first groups to integrate electronic music into pop, they did it with a sense of playfulness that atomized preconceptions about what electronic music and pop could be, challenging ideas about nostalgia, authenticity, and creative expression in the process. Their best music was both futuristic and self-consciously kitschy, threading the needle between the comforts of novelty songs and Tin Pan Alley pop and the cold experimentation of the avant-garde. And like Kraftwerk, their ability to find funk in seemingly funkless machines (not to mention explore the expressivity of then-new technology like samplers) helped shape both hip-hop and techno, to say nothing of video game music, dance pop, and almost anything else that put machines on equal footing with human performance. Their initial run only lasted six years—1978 to 1984—but it produced a handful of modern pop’s most influential albums. That they were at one time the most famous band in Japan only strengthened a creative point that resonates nearly 50 years later: that pop doesn’t have to be conservative or pandering to succeed.