Ryuichi Sakamoto is one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. The Japanese artist, who died last week after a long bout of cancer, has had an exceptional impact within a number of roles: electronic music pioneer, piano player, film scorer, classical composer, pop producer, new wave artist, keyboard virtuoso. He cofounded the groundbreaking band Yellow Magic Orchestra, produced dozens of solo works and collaborated with the likes of David Sylvian and Alva Noto. Sakamoto had his finger on the pulse of seemingly everything, including Hollywood, where he was welcomed with open arms with scores for Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, The Last Emperor and The Revenant. All that he did, he mastered.

Despite his status as a renowned composer and musical inventor, Sakamoto projected himself like a pop star. For someone so supremely talented in sound—who not only helped define electronic music, but also modern classical, city pop, jazz fusion and more—his command of image is often omitted from the conversation. He was also an actor and a fashion icon: on his Thousand Knives album cover he sported a Giorgio Armani suit jacket and Levi's 501s, and he made music for fellow pioneers like designers Yohji Yamamoto and Junya Watanabe. Crucially, he was able to traverse across cultures, gender norms and musical stereotypes. He was constantly reinventing himself, assuming the role of a gender-bending iconoclast and a chameleonic musical genius at the same time, without the baggage of being a rock star or mega-celebrity.

Sakamoto's discography is a goldmine. From the subtle to the flamboyant, his music is characterised by a distinct humanity and a sensitivity for melody. Below is a selection—and by no means a definitive list—of his tracks and albums, including pop songs and intimate compositions, that trace through his extraordinary career.

Therein lies Sakamoto's genius: he's something different to everyone. He represents a complete devotion to music and the staggering power it has to bring people together. That is his legacy.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - "Thousand Knives" (1978)

The lead track from Sakamoto's first major solo record is one of his most bewildering. It's a serious composition dressed in wacky, new wave clothes. More than 40 years later, it's still hard to wrap your head around it.

Shigeru Suzuiki - "On The Coast" (1979)

One lesser-known aspect of Sakamoto's career is his involvement in the disco-tinged Japanese sound that would eventually become known as city pop. "On The Coast" is, by any measure, a minor work in his catalogue, but one of his most precious. A cheesy love song with brilliant chord changes and astounding production, it's a great example of Sakamoto's pop instincts.

Yellow Magic Orchestra - "Technopolis" (1979)

Yellow Magic Orchestra's breakthrough was "Firecracker," a 1950s cover that spread like wildfire across the world—and even brought the Japanese band to US TV show Soul Train (and became foundational to hip-hop). But one of the first YMO tracks that really got across Sakamoto's brilliance was "Technopolis," which pre-dated the coining of the "techno" genre by several years. Splitting the difference between Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk, it's a wide-eyed cruising track that embodies the clever mix of optimism and dry humour that made YMO so original.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - "Riot In Lagos" (1980)

While Sakamoto was casually changing how the world perceived music and composition with Yellow Magic Orchestra, he kept his solo career going apace. 1980's B-2 Unit featured "Riot In Lagos," a collection of bleeps and bloops that predicted both rap and techno. If Afrika Bambaata sampled "Firecracker" as a precursor to hip-hop and electro, then "Riot In Lagos" straight-up envisioned the shape of rap music to come, its series of strange, mallet-like instruments and huffing drum machines inspiring legions of of artists from Tokyo, New York, Detroit and beyond.

Yellow Magic Orchestra - "Nice Age" (1980)

"Nice Age" shows Yellow Magic Orchestra's pop side, a sound they perfected on later records like Naughty Boys. Taken from X∞Multiplies, it sounds a bit like Berlin-period David Bowie, with stabbing guitars and wildly oscillating sequencers. Pop singer Sandii's lyrics—"She's at a nice age / Ripe age / Ready to be killed by a thrill"—haven't aged very well, but the track's uniquely erudite swagger showed how Sakamoto and friends could nail even the pulpiest of genres.

Yellow Magic Orchestra - "Light In Darkness" (1981)

The YMO tracks I've picked so far have been defined by broad horizons of melody, optimism and humour. "Light In Darkness," from the band's 1981 LP Technodelic, offers something a little more measured, with innovative drum programming that sounds like Prince jamming with Model 500. The sad, sighing strings are a precursor to Sakamoto's classical works and film scores, while the general air of melancholy exemplifies his ability to express complex emotions through mostly instrumental music.

David Sylvian & Ryuichi Sakamoto - "Bamboo Houses" (1982)

"Bamboo Houses" was one of Sakamoto's early collaborations with David Sylvian, lead singer of English new wave band Japan. Their musical partnership would endure for decades. Even now, "Bamboo Houses" sounds tantalising, mysterious and sexy, the kind of electroacoustic marvel Sakamoto became known for.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" (1983)

The one everyone knows. "Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence" is the theme song to the 1983 World War II movie of the same name, starring Sakamoto alongside David Bowie. It's one of his most elegant compositions, with a stately sway that represents the film's beautiful yet ultimately fatalist narrative arc. Sakamoto made a traditional theme song come to life with plasticky mallet sounds and ornate keyboards.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Ongaku Zukan (1984)

Sakamoto worked on Ongaku Zukan for a long time, approaching it as an exercise in making whatever music he felt like without any constraints or preconceived notions. Re-released in the West as Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia, the LP could be seen as a response to the "world music" trend of the time, with plenty of references to different countries and exotic locales in the track titles. But for the most part, the music was a collection of too-cool-for-school funk dub, reggae and other downtempo dance music, which showcased Sakamoto's talent for arrangement and rich electronic orchestration. Bonus points: some versions of the LP contain the single "Field Work," a track made with legendary '80s producer Thomas Dolby that might be Sakamoto's finest synth pop jam.

Ryuichi Sakamoto & Iggy Pop - "Risky" (1987)

Speaking of synth pop. "Risky" came out on 1987's Neo Geo album, whose name was meant to reflect a new, international musical order. This was the album's big gambit, a surprisingly successful team-up with Iggy Pop—then at the height of his popularity—for a song that blends delicate Eastern instrumentation with the big drums and reverbed vocals of '80s rock. It's a natural combination, and an underappreciated crossover moment in Sakamoto's vast catalogue.

Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne & Cong Su - The Last Emperor (1987)

The 1987 blockbuster The Last Emperor is when the rest of the entertainment industry took notice of Sakamoto. He won an Academy Award and a Grammy for the score, which was a little conservative by his standards, but still complex by Hollywood's measure. You can hear the beginnings of the beautiful string arrangements that would define the second half of his career, a mixture of Asian instrumentation, electronics and classical elements.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Sweet Revenge(1994)

Sweet Revenge followed Sakamoto's early '90s move to New York, and it's one of the few records where it sounds like he's following trends instead of predicting them. Still, it's a memorable record, featuring a number of vocalists across a painfully hip selection of rap, trip-hop and acid jazz beats, all marked with his signature melodic touch. The album cover is also one of his most iconic pictures ever.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - BTTB (1999)

After the whiplash musical trends of the '90s, Sakamoto shed all his accessories and returned to his core instrument, the piano, on BTTB. These recordings and performances—particularly the solo piano version of YMO hit "Tong Poo"—lay bare the genius of his work.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - CHASM (2004)

Spanning many genres and artists, CHASM is Sakamoto's post-9/11 album. (There's even one of many reunions with his YMO partners Yukihiro Takahashi and Haruomi Hosono). Blending piano-based works with the kind of glitchy production he'd started exploring with Alva Noto, the LP is one of those '00s records that straddles the mainstream and the avant-garde in a way that's hard to imagine nowadays. It also features one of Sakamoto's most famous and emotionally direct songs: "World Citizen" with David Sylvian. This track title might as well be Sakamoto's life motto—a figure rooted in the othered East who transcended notions of ethnicity and geography.

Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto - The Revenant (2015)

Sakamoto and Alva Noto's score for Alejandro G. Iñárritu's epic The Revenant is a study in subtle brilliance, with both artists' usual tics suppressed in favour of a compositional clarity suited to the film's icy survivalism, a blend of austere string arrangements and the faintest hints of glitch and electronic processing. As Sakamoto got older, his gifts only became finer-pointed, subsumed into the background of a cross-cultural music that moved in broad strokes but carried worlds of feeling in its depths and folds.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - async (2017)

Sakamoto's first solo album after his throat cancer diagnosis, async is a beautiful treatise on mortality. Remarkably sparse, each track is built around a sound or idea, from synths to the sound of footsteps. It most notably boasts "fullmoon," which Sakamoto talks about in this RA interview and features friends of Sakamoto reading a passage from the novel The Sheltering Sky (the film adaption of which, naturally, Sakamoto scored) in multiple languages: "Because we don’t know when we will die / We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well / Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really."

There are several possible interpretations of that quote. Sakamoto's career and his approach to music both accepts and defies it. He was an inexhaustible well of creativity, sound and music, and he seemed to live so many lives at once. If everything only happens a certain number of times, then Sakamoto took advantage of every last opportunity he had, making music right up until the end. His life was a gift to all of us, to the last century and to music as a whole.