The first thing I woke up to this morning was a friend’s post about the new Hikaru Utada (oh no wait, UTADA) song that was leaked. This song, entitled “Easy Breezy” is supposedly the radio single that will be used to promote and debut her career in the US. After countless minutes of forum hunting (the two minutes was entirely too much to waste on this), I was finally able to listen to the single on my own. To begin with, I was skeptical. Why was everyone complaining about these “I’m Japanesy” and “I’ve got a new microphone” lyrics?
The first thing I tried to focus on was the music, minus the lyrics or vocals. All in all, it’s not an awful tune. I can’t see it amassing a crazy legion of fans or anything, which on the contrary to what everyone plus me is claiming, will probably occur just to spite us. The whole song is extremely slow, nothing upbeat at all. The angle the songs seems to be taking is incredibly unclear. It’s probably more pop than anything, but it seriously just sounds like someone spun a random beat from a $100 Yamaha, added some sound effects, and came up with a melody on it that seemed decent enough. Albeit, incredibly juvenile.
The lyrics? Painful. Everyone was right about the awful “Japanesy” line, but the verses aren’t better. The whole “microphone” bit gets old. Fast. To touch on the vocals for a moment, they’re not any better. I never really liked Utada’s voice much, but this song takes the cake. Most of the high notes come off sounding like she can’t reach them and she constantly sounds like she’s running out of air. At the end, she souns like a child warbling on her parent’s tape recorder.
I don’t like it. The tune is not half bad, but that means it’s only half good. The lyrics and vocals stink. Will America care? Probably not. The “Japanesy” line will probably be caught in the lips of Top 40 listeners everywhere. I mean, not to degrade the majority of Top 40 listeners, but come on. We’re talking about a nation that put Usher’s song “Yeah” at number one for a substantial amount of weeks. And his lyrics consisted of a whole bunch of “yeahs“. The tune is catchy to the point where I’m humming it constantly and can’t get it out of my head no matter how how I try. Perfect for the radio. And even better for one hit wonder success; “You’re my butterfly, sugar, baby” anyone?
Now, on the other hand, the other previews I’ve heard off the album are sounding quite good. In fact, I’m almost infatuated with that Richard Vission remix of “Devil Inside.” Unfortunately, that’s not the song they’re using to represent the album, which is a real shame. At least around here, we don’t have a dance station for this kind of song to be played. Hearing these new, really awesome previews arise and then comparing it to “Easy Breezy,” it’s really hard to determine if, ahem, UTADA’s career will be successful or mediocre, but at least it doesn’t seem like it’ll be a total flop.
appears 