This Is Utada Part 1

Posted about 3 years ago

Artist:
- PLAY
Utada

I am going to say in advance that this post may be fairly messy and random as I post all my various thoughts.

Hikaru Utada, my favourite female artist, is releasing her second - though technically her third - English album in the US in March.

News always seems to be a bit slow on the Hikaru front and she takes a while between releases. So I was quite happy to see that her official site with Island Def Jam had updated her website with her new single Come Back To Me.

Problems with this being:

01 Hikaru has signed a two album deal with Def Jam. The first one she had control of but flopped. (Ironically Timbaland produced two of the tracks on there - if only she'd released Exodus now. Exodus was released in 2004). So my thinking is if this is her last album with Def Jam, they're going to want to do it their way, which perhaps fair enough...

02 So I should not have any expectations for the new song. But I had a high expectation of this song - despite trying not to get my hopes too high - because it's out there for everyone to hear and her chance to make it big in the US, and I don't want her name on what I think is a rather mediocore single. If this was a Japanese single it wouldn't be as big a deal if I didn't like it. I would only first hear it in context of the album anyway.

03 Kiriya Kazuaki - her now ex-husband and film director - will no longer be directing her videos. Her videos were part of the reason why I liked her so much. Her Japanese videos have being going downhill since he has moved onto films. So it's not going to be the Hikaru I want to see.

First impression on the song? When I heard the title Come Back To Me, I immediately thought "sounds like some duff Chris Brown ballad". And...

It does. (On the upside, yay I win! Guessed it right!)

Things I do not like about Come Back To Me:

Melody is rather weak
R&B beat is "interfering"
Vocals aren't her best
Doesn't sound very Hikki-ish.
Sounds very generic

So in the grand scheme of this it is just ONE song, which actually may not even be released in the UK. I'm just assuming she's going to release the album here, but who knows!

But I am very disappointed as it is exactly the type of song I do not like. If she was going to go for an R&B ballad could we not have something along the lines of I Hate This Part by the Pussycat Dolls?(Yes - I did just type that!). I think what bothers me most is that if this is released in the UK, I am going to cringe a bit when Radio 1 play it (if they do). I am a bit of a Radio 1 fan, so for them to be playing the type of song that would usually make me thing "Ugh, why are they playing this?" and it being a song by one of my favourite artists is just a bit...cringeworthy. I was hoping if she was going the R&B ballad route we would have something similar to Prisoner of Love, which is by no means her best song, but quite enjoyable anyway!

Hikaru has actually done quite a bit of R&B in the past. From what I have heard of her first English album it was R&B heavy, though it was more "classic" sounding. (Her first Japanese album First Love was also an R&B album). She actually recorded her first English album, Precious I think is the name, before signing a Japanese record deal. Due to the label going bust Precious was never released but caught the attention of a Japanese record label, who then asked her if she could write in Japanese. She said "Yes," though she had never done this before.

We still have the video to come and I totally hated the video for Easy Breezy - the first single from Exodus. It's hard to explain why I hate this video so much, maybe you'll have to watch it to understand, but it is everything I hate in a music video. You know when you watch those Making of the Video programmes on MTV (back when MTV actually showed music related programmes) and the director goes on about the "story" in the video and how it relates to the song. But it's just random shots of a singer looking pretty/dancing/scantily dressed etc. Those are the videos I hate and I made a mistake of watching the making of it, which bored the crap out of me. (I also actually watched most of the making of the Travelling video in Japanese, which does sound pretty stupid as I couldn't understand any of it. But you did see how the made parts of the video - claymation etc - and it was quite interesting lol!)

The first UK single release was You Make Me Want To Be A Man, which was exactly what I was looking for. OK the song was no Sakura Drops or Passion but songs of that standard aren't going to come along all the time. It was a brilliant video - just how I imagined & directed by Kaz, nothing like Easy Breezy - and a catchy pop song which should have done better than it did. It charted at 227 - I didn't even release we had that many chart positions in the UK. I wonder how much you have to sell to make 227? Would love to know lol!

So, I'm hoping the new English album will not be in the same vein as Come Back To Me. The title is currently speculated to be called - ironically - This Is Utada. (Obviously I don't think this new single represents her at all) But I'm going to have to realise her videos aren't going to be as great as the once were - or just great... She needs to get Ayumi Hamasaki's and Mika Nakashima's video directors on board! Or whoever directed Welcome To The Black Parade for My Chemical Romance). Plus who knows what the UK single will be. There was a big diference in the US and UK singles from Exodus, and you know which one I prefer.

So I'll shall save my disappointment/backtracking for when I see the video and hear the new album! (I was actually...kind of....comtemplating not buying until I heard what everyone else thought. Which is quite sad considering the impact Deep River had on me).

Here are some of the videos I've mentioned in my post - not posting ones I have recently included in other posts - but I have not posted a Youtube link to the audio of the new single. Not an awful song, just not worth your time. Sounds kind of like a Mariah song/your usual ballad fare from Chris Brown/Neyo/Rihanna.

Easy Breezy (US release)