Stay Gold - Thoughts on Hikaru Utada

[Enfluerage]

Originally Posted by ストロボ・EdGE

..."Dumbing down her songs"? How do you know she wasn't being serious? I don't think she was aiming for satire here or in any of her other sexual songs. She knows that the average American who listened to it would not assume so much and find a deep and criticizing meaning behind a song like 'Dirty Desire'.

Lol... Because I watched an interview before about this. Hikaru described how American audiences are different than Japanese audiences. And how she intentionally changed her songs.

Here's an interesting note: an interviewer once asked her why she wrote about "Come back to me?" - was it about personal experience ie: she cheated on a partner? Hikaru laughed and said no... She wrote the song because she felt there were too many American songs about guys cheating on girls and later begging forgiveness - so she wanted to turn the tables on this, and write a song about a girl cheating on a guy. Is this not "commentary"?

And btw, the things I wrote about Hikaru may seem a bit strange to many casual fans, but I've seen lots of interviews about her, and this is just the impression I get, in my personal opinion.

As for the comment "most talented singer in the world"... I don't mean it as "singer with the best voice, or best singing skill"... It's more a comment how Hikaru was a child prodigy and has written, composed and arranged 8 albums of material (well almost all of it - excluding one cover) by the age of 26. And the albums have done very well, even without especial marketing. How is that not talented?

But if you are a Hamasaki Ayumi fan, read on the rest of the article and if you really understand what I wrote, you'll be delighted! Of course, this article is very complicated. The true meaning behind it is this... Hikaru is talented and musically very successful. But what impresses me the most about her is that she almost has the same passion for music as Hamasaki Ayumi (the music artist I respect the most). Or in other words - I wrote so many nice things bout Hikaru ... but gave Hamasaki Ayumi the better compliment.

Have a think about this statement carefully:

The highest compliment I can give Hikaru Utada is not that she's talented... but that she is the only active singer that I still listen to regularly, that debuted before Hamasaki Ayumi.

Ie: notice I didn't write "The highest compliment I can give Hikaru Utada is that I respect her more than Hamasaki Ayumi" (because that isn't the case!)

Anyway, hope that explains the point of the article (and the first line)

[jean-baptiste]

^i'm guessing you missed this?

Originally Posted by Enfluerage

As for the comment "most talented singer in the world"... I don't mean it as "singer with the best voice, or best singing skill"... It's more a comment how Hikaru was a child prodigy and has written, composed and arranged 8 albums of material (well almost all of it - excluding one cover) by the age of 26. And the albums have done very well, even without especial marketing. How is that not talented?

anyways, i enjoyed reading this article. greatly written.