HIKARU UTADA - HEART STATION UNCUT REACTION!

also just wanted to add, the room ambiance and makeup were so perfectly aligned here, and it's always a treat to hear music through your ears no matter where you fall in terms of feeling it! your focus and attention to detail draw out the bits and pieces that make music happen, and it's a lot of fun hearing you share about what works and what doesn't for you because you're so clever and perceptive, and you give the work your time and open yourself up to it either way. love it!

super late to this party but so happy to have a minute (or more like a couple hours haha!) to watch the reaction. never fret over how your tastes and preferences impact your enjoyment of Hikaru's music, part of the fun of having such a varied discography is that there are some albums that are iconic to certain followers of theirs, and far less interesting to others (HEART STATION has been unofficially taken up as "the gay album" in some corners lol). the other fun part is that as an artist she's never really stuck in one place; one album will sound like this, and as you'll see with ULTRA BLUE, you're going to get a very different approach that i think might more closely align with the engaging bits you did like from this album i do think the thing about where this places contextually in her career bears repeating; when Hikaru went on hiatus she was only 26 years old and had already put out 8 albums! they started incredibly young in the industry and a lot of the material in this period feels like seeking a deeper understanding of their musical identity, or even wanting to completely reconfigure that musical identity, while also being constrained and exhausted within the genre norms and expectations of "Pop Music." i think a lot of the bridges, the beats and the more melodic hip hop features of HEART STATION carry over into their modern stuff but with a more toothy sense of how to implement them and make them feel driving and fresh rather than redundant-- which is just what i think anyone would want to see from a veteran musical artist honing their craft! that said i'm lucky enough to almost always vibe with Hikaru so for me this is a perfect partner with This Is The One for easy listening, kick back and relax, or sing along in the car. the really infectious masterful bits on this album do tend to reveal themselves over time, and i think a number of the songs are simply better in isolation-- i could listen to "Niji Iro Bus" on repeat and never feel it's too long, the way the whole song empties out before the harmonies come in sends me soaring every time, it's a great anthemic album closer strengthened by her signature, deceptively personal lyrics imo :) some spare after the fact notes: "Kiss & Cry" self-samples a melody from another song of hers you haven't heard yet (and a favorite of mine). i won't spoil it but just a fun bit of trivia, she's actually done this a couple of times and always manages to recycle old ideas in the most unexpected places! this particular song grew on me a lot over time, and it wasn't until her live performance where she ate that song UP in concert several years back that it fully clicked, and now i can't get enough of it! the ballad version of "Flavor of Life" is the canon version lol even Hikaru was like "nah" to the original and just made it a bonus track :'D TAKE 5 ends the way it does because Hikaru wrote that song while contemplating the concept of death and the ways life can end abruptly (reading between the lines, it's clear that she has struggled with suicidal ideation, and has been faced with the specter of it from a young age by way of her mom)-- i think if the album as a whole had been more willing to get deep like that it would feel less jarring, but at least it makes for a standout track! OK sorry for the essay, i'm excited to see you get into the meat of her early to mid catalogue, from ULTRA BLUE on down they were at peak output with a lot of energy behind every release and i think that shows through in the music <3

i’m glad there were aspects of the album that caught your attention! please don’t feel any pressure to like any songs or the whole album; it’s completely understandable that there will be highs and lows that you find of an artist’s discography. i think that’s something special about her discography, that you can find something for a lot of different people. i definitely do think this album is unique for me in that i have a lot of the songs in my playlists, but most aren’t in my top hikaru utada songs, so i can see why it may not be as impactful as her future (or past) works. her career has been highly dynamic, and i want you to know that you’re definitely gonna be in for a wild ride with many of the rest of the albums sometimes sounding completely different from the other. also i think take 5 ends abruptly bc it’s supposed to represent how life could end in such a manner lol. i agree im not sure if it’s the best way to represent that but i still love the rest of the song. i appreciate that u view the lyrics in the context of her life and considering the hiatus. during the hiatus, i believe she met her ex and had a child with him (who you can actually hear at the end of “Not in the Mood” from BAD MODE). her mother also passed during that time, which greatly influenced Fantôme. also yes there are some random songs you may find on her albums that don’t seem to fit in the context of the rest of the album. often the explanation is that it’s a song she wrote for a commercial or movie unrelated to her life and she just tacks it on the album. (btw ik the reaction just came out but the reason my comments came faster is cuz i usually watch all videos in 2x speed due to my tendencies from ADHD lol)

also fern no worries if locating the lyrics trips you up! guilty to admit this, but i’m not too familiar with the lyrics myself. it’s actually quite nice to discover the meanings of many of the songs at the same time as you.

currently watching this at 3AM 👀

omggg i forgot how messy the track list is 😭 not the ballad version coming before the actual version