This Is (Not) The One
$11.99. Three dollars below the price of retail. It's also the price of being disappointed, if you don't count the tax, and one month + street date it took to get it with free shipping. This is admittedly a rather small sunk cost, all things considered. I wonder if Utada Hikaru feels the same way.
A little less than 5 years after the release of Exodus, she has basically written it off. In another 5 years or so, will she dismiss This Is the One as well? In trying to be accessible, one cannot escape a confrontation with the disposable realities of trying to appeal to as many people as possible.
Disposable won, yet it will probably never make gold in the target market, let alone platinum.
With this second English album, her contract ought to be fulfilled, a notion that I entertain with relief. Island Def Jam might be relieved as well since, at this rate, TITO might not even outsell Exodus. Proof perhaps that trying to put the artist in front of their music is not going to work, even if it's Utada Hikaru we're talking about.
But it's not like they haven't tried this before. It all started with that press kit for Exodus, which was less of a promotion of the CD as it was a promotion of her past. First Love! Biggest CD in Japanese history! Almost 9 million copies! Past performance guarantees future returns!
It's not a cause, but just one aspect of a theme that describes her time in America. How do her interviews start? With few exceptions, the interviewer kicks things off by gushing about how many CD's she's sold in Japan. What do they ask her next? What it's like writing in English.
And for a follow up? New York vs Tokyo.
Oh, and if the interviewer doesn't ask this, the fans always ask if she'll ever tour in the US. With the advent of the internet, people ought to know by now that she gives the exact same canned answer, every single time. Getting asked the same questions by ignorant people is awkward as foobar, and it shows since the number of non-awkward interviews she's done can be counted on three fingers.
By the way, isn't being asked something whose answer is obvious, by someone who purports to be a fan, a local maximum of disrespect? Also, not likely, unless she performs at clubs or small indie venues. Utada Hikaru + large concert venue + Exodus + TITO = 0/0.
People need to think of better questions. Or just think.
Speaking of fans, who showed up to all those meet and greets? Fans exclusively of Exodus and TITO? Give me a break. These people came to see the woman who wrote and sang Addicted to You, First Love, and Hikari. You know it, I know it.
If IDJ feels that they must have Utada Hikaru speak for her music, when she has always tended to let it speak for itself, what does that say? There's no conviction in the merits of her work. That's a point that anyone going into TITO must realize.
Nowhere is this more evident than what she says whenever she tries to talk TITO. Inevitably she brings up Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence - FYI and how it has a Star Trek reference. It is a statement delivered with barely a straight face, and why should we expect otherwise?
Is anyone going to run out and buy the album because one of the tracks has one token geek reference? I put token geek references into my entries all the time. What on earth is nerdcore if not rap with a whole lot more than one geek reference?
Things might have been better if she didn't have to spend her time in farcical attempts to justify herself. Then again, it may not have mattered, because the same lack of conviction is zip-loc'ed into the album itself, presumably with the express purpose of keeping the meh-ness.
Racy, but unconvincing. Emulation, but with no personal stamp. When the best (overall?) track flirts with getting stuck in the mud, you know that someone's not pushing hard enough.
Maybe they don't want to.
P.S.
Best songs, in order:
- This One (Crying Like A Child)
- Me Muero
- Apple and Cinnamon
Appendix: Track-by-track
On And On has a loop of some guy yelling and it goes, well, on and on. Backing instrumentals are predominantly: club synth, bass drum, yelling guy loop. That's it.
Lead vocals are airy, and vocal backing is almost non-existent. Texture is consequently flat. It's understood that this is supposed to hypnotically minimal. Great trance-lite work is rare; this is not one of them.
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence - FYI, apart from the movie sampling, is notable for its random second verse and bridge lyrics. This is also one of those fine examples where there are not enough syllables to fit the melody, and holding over or repeating the ends of words is resorted to.
Mr. Lawrence occupies this precarious no man's land between nonsense and "Let's make out," vulnerable to MP3 player bombardment courtesy of Captain Picard who is, apparently, flossing. In Star Trek: TNG do people even have to brush their teeth?
If you want to go all the way, then go all the way. Where's the conviction? Oh wait, there isn't any.
Apple And Cinnamon has me thinking of Heaven or Las Vegas. The two have nothing in common, but maybe I feel that the chorus could have been Cocteau Twins inspired. Equalized strings, post-processed vocal effects, etc. The chorus, with its octave voice leaps, makes the third track: it's longer than the second verse. Everything else is serviceable, if standard. Lyrics are repetitive in a Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V sense. This gets pretty awkward in the section before the recapitulation.
Oh I know, this is what Cocteau Twins might have sounded like if they went minimalistic. I don't mind the sparse texture here as it's fitting with the mourning tone.
Taking My Money Back is deceptive in its opening. For a moment, it could have plausibly gone all Cascada on us, a fate preferable to the 90's R&B that results. As a cover of those times, there is nothing wrong with it, other than the repetitive lines in the chorus (see a trend emerging?), and the fact that anybody with more vocal power could have done a better job.
This One (Crying Like A Child) is hands down the best track on this album. Most cohesive lyrics, repetition that (gasp!) actually works, the only aspect of the lyrics that is tiresome is the use of similes while invoking Freddie Mercury and Simon and Garfunkel. The insecurity of acoustic guitar and piano in the verse gives way to a plaintive electric guitar line in the chorus. For 4 minutes and 31 seconds, the writing is aligned. Shame it couldn't go for longer.
Automatic Part II is, 10% autobiographical, 10% self-promotion (for those who pirated the thing?) and 80% random. I think I'm being generous in that assessment. The composition is about as sparse as On And On, except lounder and with plenty of synth interjections, but the lyrics are left to carry the day, and 80% random is not going to cut it. There are moments of brilliance like that pun on Virgin Records, but the effort is misplaced.
This could have been the Animato of the album, a quirky, vibrant and self-referential track. Instead, we get something distinctly industrial, and all the negative aspects of being mechanical.
Dirty Desire is another 90's era track. Maybe early 90's, updated modestly for the twenty-first century by adding a more prominent electronic element in the bridge and chorus. I know that in general this album is supposed to be mainstream, but I didn't read the memo that IDJ was delivering to 1998. Adds a whole new dimension doesn't it?
There is nothing modest about the lyrics, although I am generally unfazed even after a rather awkward stereotype is thrown into the mix. There is a decent outro that has no business being in this song, but I'll take what I can get.
Poppin', wherein a English accent is attempted, and flops, because the word "like" was used on two consecutive lines. If I were the type of person to fall out of my chair, I would have fallen out of my chair and and tumbled down a flight stairs. It would be about as slick.
If you can get over that hurdle, and the shrill sections, and can accept a song about women running around a club without a certain undergarment, then you have a decent spy track, specifically jazz rock. Opens with a passage of call and response, but the highlight was the vocal harmony, but unfortunately there are only two vocally fleshed out chords of it in the entire song.
[Why on earth are all these song titles officially fully capitalized?]
Come Back To Me was written for somebody that is not Utada Hikaru. Somebody who can put a little more power into the chorus, with a little snap to clean up the ends of phrases, more dynamic span in general, and whose range doesn't peter out into a squeak during the climax of the song.
Regrettably, this optimal singer would have to sing the lyrics of the second bridge and said climax without dying of embarrassment, a pretty tall order. That's in addition to the extreme repetitiveness of the chorus, but by now that's par for the course.
I would pay money to see if she can play that piano opening, shades of Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor (No. 1). In all this griping I almost forgot to mention that she managed to work "Photoshop" into the first verse, but that's not going to salvage a flat performance and spots of awkward writing.
Me Muero opens with bossa nova elevator music, and someone has taken a fancy to the E. Piano mode of a Yamaha Clavinova or equivalent. Good imagery, in both writing and music, evoking second-hand smoke and tall ceiling fans.
Undercurrent in acoustic guitar, but this track is a dominantly vocal affair and backgrounds are, while not sparse, pretty light. On the other hand there is ample voice layering, and the song stands out for having the richest vocals of any in the album.
The bonus tracks on the CD were two versions of Sanctuary and Simple and Clean. I don't care for any of the three since they're just Passion and Hikari with English lyrics shoehorned in. It was a slog to write those lyrics, and it's obvious. I'll stick with the originals.