I love Utada Hikaru's voice, but every time she tries to break into the US market it seems like an epic fail to me. They make her sing weak songs that don't showcase her strong voice, plus you can clearly tell that these songs were not written by her (she writes a lot of her material in Japan). This is the second attempt for Utada who has dual Japanese and American citizenship, the first attempt was the single "Easy Breezy" a horrible song released in 2004. With lyrics like "you're easy breezy and I'm Japaneezy, you look stupid telling all your friends you got the best of me...." it never went far, the lyrics were just too horrible even for the American pop music industry. Currently, she has released "Come Back to Me" which is not as horrible, but mostly sounds generic and boring, like something a washed up Mariah Carey would sing in her Glitter days. I just hope whatever other singles come out in America will be much stronger than this Nicole Sherzinger rip off (Utada can compete if you give her the material to work with). I am posting both US releases plus her Japanese stuff, I strongly encourage you to see the difference between the Americanized sound, and Utada's more personal Japanese sound.
American Releases:
Come Back To Me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPd_c0X1b3w
Easy Breezy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MUv4wMiDk4
Her Japanese Stuff:
I agree - her US releases are rather one-dimensional. I don't understand why they don't try some English lyrics on some of her Japanese releases like BoA does.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Tokyo Nights is also one of her excellent Japanese songs. It's more upbeat than all of her other songs, but that's what makes it special/good :).
Simple and Clean is all I ever wanted to hear from her, unless she makes the theme to Kingdom Hearts 3! lmao. She's ok though
ReplyDeleteI agree. Hikki has a lot of great material in Japan. I think Simple and Clean was good. Why didn't she just released that in US instead of using it as a soundtrack for Kingdom Hearts? :(
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