This is a page devoted to my favourite Japanese musician of all, Utada Hikaru - nickname Hikki.  She's not the coolest with The Kids (i.e. your students), nor the most outgoing of people, but really talented, intellectual, sexy... and married to someone fifteen years older than her.  But less about that.  She's still releasing records, but has moved her attention to the US.  She's recently released "Exodus", in English, for the American market.  Luckily it's sold well in Japan and it happens to be really good; much more grown up and very different from her Japanese stuff.

While there are much better fansites around (please see the bottom of the page), here are a few facts about her and enough information about her music to see if it's worth renting her CD from Tsutaya...

She was born in New York (on Jan 19, 1983) to Japanese parents and released an R'n'B album in the USA under the name Cubic U.  She then moved to Tokyo to release her first Japanese album, First Love, and returned to New York to study at Columbia University whilst working on her next two albums, Distance and Deep River.  Since then, two more singles have followed, Colors and Dare ka no Negai ga Kanaukoro.  The nearest classification she falls into is R&B but her more recent material is more varied, featuring funky dance tracks (with surreal videos to go with them), ballads and well-rounded pop songs.  She writes all of her music and lyrics, and although most J-Pop artists insert Engrish into their music to make it sound "cooler", Utada is one of the first to use CORRECT English in context with the rest of the song.

She's also rare in the J-Pop world in that she actually has a discernible personality.  She's not afraid to talk about literature (on her official website, she says "My books take up more space than my clothes").  She cites one of her favourite books as Orwell's 1984, one of her favourite musicians as Bjork, and one of her favourite films as Being John Malkovich, all particular favourites of mine.  Oh and she's good at Tetris.  But her main attraction is the music, so here follows a rough guide...
 

Sadly, she starts off with rather cheesy R'n'B, released in the U.S. when she was a student, which stays at a pretty constant level of cheese throughout the album.  But I'm letting her off as it's not "proper" Utada, and you've got to start somewhere.  Try listening to her version of Close to You for novelty value, then this CD can be consigned towards the bottom of the pile to make way for...

OK, so this is where her talent starts to shine through.  Despite one or two traces of the cheesiness from Cubic U, this mainly R'n'B album is both really well produced and shows off her emotional voice. 

Top three tracks...

Automatic - A really good, chilled, pop song.  Funky beat, nice backing vocals (by herself), uplifting tune, this has everything.
First Love - Testing her ballad skills to the limit.  Yes, it goes up a key two-thirds of the way through.
Movin' On Without You - the most upbeat track on the album.

Also, see if you can spot Sting in Never Let Go.

Here her unique style comes through, with each track having a different feel.  There are more guitars and the album is, on the whole, more adventurous and kick-ass than the first.

Top three tracks...

Can You Keep a Secret - Emotional yet funky R'n'B.  Non-tacky use of Flamenco guitars.
Wait and See - rockyfunkypop; really dramatic.
Parody - feels vaguely French.  And, maybe it's just me, but is that not another Sting sample?

Similar in style to Distance, but a little more relaxed.  A good cross section of all of her styles with less of the R'n'B than before.  The most consistently good album, even if Distance is perhaps slightly more interesting.

Traveling - her most catchy and disco-esque song, perfectly complemented by the video.
Final Distance - an amazing ballad (I can't believe I'm putting those words together) which is a slowed-down version of Distance on the previous album.  Again, you see what she's doing there?
Tokyo Nights - As you might expect from the title, pretty up-tempo.  A harpsichord features prominently.

Colors
2003

My favourite Hikki song of all.  A love song, from what I can gather, which cleverly features, you've guessed it, lots of colour similies.  The sound is amazing; hugely atmospheric, slightly but not overbearingly electronic, with epic strings, an echoing backing melody and a satisfying beat which slows down for the bridge then picks itself back up for the chorus.  She uses her trademark emotional vocals to the full, sounding relaxed in the verse and on the verge of tears in the chorus (something she's very good at).  The only thing I can criticise is the 80's style "orchestra hit" noise which sounds like a 10-year-old trying out all the sounds on a new keyboard.  But I'll let it go.

Dare ka no Negai ga Kanaukoro (When somebody's wish is granted)
2004

A good acoustic ballad (yes, emotional) featuring little more than her, a guitar and a piano, the simple ones are often the best.  A great exercise for her vocal range and money-making skills; this did very well as the soundtrack to the manga-inspired film Casshern.  As yet, it doesn't feature on any album.

Does exactly what it says on the tin. 
Has all the tracks you "need" to hear (except for "Dare ka no...")
 

I ordered this as soon as it came out in September, and it's a good one.  It's much beefier than her music in Japanese, featuring big producers.  The first single, Easy Breezy is very catchy and beepy, but in a good way.  I've just about got over the dodgy lyric, "You're easy breezy and I'm Japanese-y" and have got into the other tracks on the album too.  Some tracks are instantly appealing and others are growers.  Most feature beats, synthesisers, a hint of Asianness and her big vocal range.  Buy it if her Japanese stuff is too... Japanese.

Top three tracks...
Exodus '04 - a very emotional song.  Lush strings, Timbaland beats and inspirational vocals.
Easy Breezy - Beepy, twangy, squelchy and catchy.
Devil Inside - Thudding beats and frantic plucking making a stand-out pop song. 

Final Distance - where two versions of herself are reaching out to each other before perhaps being transported to the afterlife while a load of large ballerinas and theatrical types stare at the camera from the background;

Traveling - where she's a happy, bouncy futuristic tour guide to a whole group of aliens, going round space and stuff; they also play invisible table tennis.  The bits where she's not looking all futuristic are a nice contrast - she looks amazing, but I'm biased.

Sakura Drops - Set in a kind of pseudo-nature where she wears a stringy outfit and wanders around a multi-coloured world full of strange, hybrid animals and cherry trees.  And drops.  Can you see what she's doing there?  The song's pretty brilliant too.

Others are good too; Can You Keep a Secret features a date with a robot (with a cunning twist at the end), Wait and See features her rocketing around a deserted Shibuya, and Hikari is a whole video of her doing the washing up.  You can see that they went over-budget with the others.

As far as I'm concerned, Utada Hikaru deserves to be an international superstar - perhaps she's on her way there now with a more grown-up rebranding (in the States) as simply "Utada".  Despite the dodgy lyric mentioned above, her new album bodes well for the future; it certainly sounds like she's put a lot of work into trying to break the American market.  Going by the publicity in the shops, she might not do continue too badly in Japan either; who knows, she could even return to Number One Cool Spot with students too (they rarely admit to liking her, she has a brain, you see...)  So hopefully you might want to go to Tsutaya and rent one of her CDs or DVDs, who knows, you might end up buying them all too...

Links:

Hikki's Official Website (on Toshiba-EMI, in Japanese and English)
Utada - Official US site (on Universal/Island) annd its Japanese equivalent.
Hikaru Online (a big fan site with the latest news and rumours, however it's hit-and-miss whether it works or not)
Hikaru no Tenshi If you want to know what Utada would look like as one of your students, then this is probably the right place.  However the site contains a lot of good stuff -  a whole load of information, wallpapers, screensavers and the like.