Hikki went to Rina Sawayama's set in Brixton this weekend. For those who might not know, Rina Sawayama is a Japanese based in London singer that always mentioned Utada as her biggest idol since she was a teenager. So cute that Hikki went to see her live and meet her backstage!

https://i.imgur.com/x5IV2OP.jpg

@rinasonline
thank u Hikaru for coming to see my set at Brixton �� as many of u know Utada Hikaru is one of my biggest musical inspirations �������� what is lifeeeee ???!!!!! ������������������������������������
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4XILSqAucF/

Hikki pulling a Benjamin Button and aging backwards I see

So cool that she went to Rina's show!

omg that's a huge deal!! Rina is a big fan! I'm so glad they met.

It'd be amazing for me to meet Hikki, I can't even imagine how it feels to Rina, probably the best feeling ever. Soooo happy for her, and also it's amazing Hikki went out to meet her. I truly love Hikki as a person and artist!

What is the new song on apple music? "The Sun & Moon in Tokyo"?

^It's a different version from "The sun and Moon in London" with Shiina from her best of.

The TYO ver. is ok, but I think the LDN ver. is so much better.

Did you see they uploaded a full clip of her Yosui Inoue's rendition of "Shounen Jidai" from that DVD of her 20th birthday anniversary?



They also uploaded a short video of the 2019 version that will be included on the composer's tribute album.

Hikki will release a new song called Time, which is for the new drama "Bishoku Tantei Akechi Goro". The drama will be aired on Apr 12, while the song will be digitally released on May 8.

Something that I can look forward to during this boring moment.

Yay, so glad she's treating us to a new song at a time like this! Hatsukoi was so good so I can't wait to hear what she comes up with next.

Quick question. Why did Single Collection Volume II underperform? There were plenty of hits on that album, maybe not a bit going into the album like COLORS for Volume I, and only covered two albums, but still. Any thoughts?

I would think that it is indeed primarily cos of the reasons you mentioned, especially with half the album belonging to HEART STATION which already sold 1m+ copies so it probably didn't give fans much of an incentive.

I also think the new songs, which were a big selling point, weren't really that big hits — I would say Goodbye Happiness was only somewhat of a moderate hit? And Hymne a l'amour did get a tie-in but I think because it's not really a conventional pop song it didn't turn out to be a hit either. Considering Hikki's career stage by that point, I think it would have really taken only a mega hit (Flavor of Life for HEART STATION, Hanataba wo Kimi ni + comeback hype for Fantome) to yield big numbers because her sales no longer rely on her being the "it" girl that she was in the late 90s/early 2000s. So the result was probably the same reason why Hatsukoi didn't sell as much since it didn't yield big hits either (it still got #5 album of the year, but it still was a >50% drop tho).

And in terms of actual album promotion I don't think she actually did any, she probably went on only 1 or 2 music shows, if any at all (my memory is failing me, but I just remember that aside from the tie-ins there was virtually no promo for this album other than the typical billboards etc.).

^she went straight to hiatus from basically the announcement.

The R&B hikki is back :P.

My god, I'm absolutely in love with the preview already. :heart

I’m actually not feeling it at all :( I’ll give it another chance when the full version comes out though. I’ll try to stay open to it lol. I’ll probably be watching the drama too so that might help lol.

While I can hear the R&B influences, I also feel this is the closest she’s been to the ULTRA BLUE vibes in ages! I think I’ll like it. I never listen to Hatsukoi. In fact, half the time I forget it exists. I still perceive her last effort to be Fantome. Lol.