Text: Tsuya-chan
Hikaru Utada, who has been a pop star representing Asia since the late 1990s, has released the first best album of her career. In his long discography, there was once a compilation called “Utada Hikaru SINGLE COLLECTION VOL.1/VOL.2,” but that was just a single collection, not a best album. Hikaru Utada is a musician who has always grasped the changing atmosphere between himself and his time, and has deconstructed and revived himself. Therefore, his best album is not just a collection of past songs, but a collection of works that clearly reflect his current self. As expected, songs that have been released for some time have been remixed or re-recorded, and new songs have also been included. And the mysterious word “SCIENCE FICTION” was added to the title. This is a fresh and ambitious new work, typical of Hikaru Utada.
However, it is still difficult to say that Hikaru Utada’s works in recent years, which have magically transformed by absorbing R&B and even warm electronica, are widely understood even outside of Asia. Fortunately, his talent is gradually being discovered in America. His latest album “BAD Mode”, in which he created a detailed sound world with AG Cook and Floating Points, was ranked 31st on Pitchfork’s “The 50 Best Albums of 2022”. In addition, “Somewhere Near Marseilles”, a remix version of which was included in this best album, also ranked 10th on Pitchfork’s “The 100 Best Songs of 2022”.
Of course, the performance on the main stage of[Coachella Festival 2022]must have supported this. Hikaru Utada, who performed with members of “88rising”, Asia’s leading hip-hop/R&B label, is slowly gaining acceptance in the American market. In fact, among the songs included in this album “SCIENCE FICTION”, “First Love”, “One Last Kiss”, and “Kimi ni Madoka” all made it to the US global chart
As I mentioned at the beginning, this is a best-of album so vividly packaged that it could even be called a “new work,” so I’d like to draw some auxiliary lines for a wide variety of understandings. The first thing I want to mention above all is the album’s meaningful name, “SCIENCE FICTION.” Since it is also the title of the live tour that will be held this year, it may be premature to unravel the mystery based only on the contents of this best album, but whether it is “science fiction” or so-called “SF”, there are many When I look back at Hikaru Utada’s path up to this point, I think it’s an understandable concept.
Hikaru Utada had a strong impression as an R&B-oriented singer-songwriter when she first debuted, but after her 3rd album DEEP RIVER (2002), she gradually strengthened her electronic music elements, and since then, she has become popular with DTM and live performances. He has captured an outstanding physicality in his songs. In “BAD Mode”, in collaboration with AG Cook and Floating Points, his body is exposed to even more electronic sounds, but there are looping flat rhythms and strange sounds that are maniacally applied here and there. Although the processing is contradictory, it creates a strange balance. For example, let’s use words like “universality” and “unnaturalness” to describe it. When I previously asked Utada about these two elements that make up his work, he said, “Music is a very physical thing,” and said the following.
(Music) can be expressed in waveforms, and you can also think in terms of frequency, texture, and sense of quantity. I’m a person who really wants to aim for a sphere. I think if you pay attention to the distribution of all the elements, the overall balance you’re aiming for will naturally come out. I thought about the parts that can be predicted and the parts that can’t be predicted, “Even if it only happens once in the song, it still feels like I was aiming for something”, and how often and how much distribution I want to mix in the sense of discomfort. I also consider the relationship between elements in terms of distribution.
–From an interview article published on Billboard JAPAN June 2, 2021
It is clear that he strives for balance from an extremely objective perspective, but his approach of expanding his worldview by introducing a sense of discomfort to such universal things can’t help but be said to be somewhat science fiction-like. The way mechanicality and physicality are constructed with a tension-filled sense of balance, coupled with the unique musical notation of recent bilingual lyrics, stirs our emotions every time we listen to it.
And since the release of “SCIENCE FICTION” was revealed, Hikaru Utada herself has hinted that her interests in quantum mechanics and simulation hypotheses influenced the album title. Indeed, in the latest song “Flower of No Color,” which is also included in this best album, it goes like this: “Ah, according to a famous scholar/It seems like we’re just illusions/Today too/I’m in love with you.” The lyrics include “If I can’t believe in myself/I can’t believe in anything/It’s the same as non-existence/Only facts that can’t be confirmed/I’ll call it truth” and themes such as the anthropic principle and realism.The famous scholar is Nick.・I wonder if he’s referring to Bostrom.
A flower without any color / Hikaru Utada
What should be noted at this time is the new song “Electricity”, which was released for the first time in this work. The song, whose title has meanings such as “electricity”, “(intense) excitement”, or “something that spreads”, uses an undulating beat by Sam Shepard, aka Floating Points, and once again uses an innovative musical score. After making a strange sound like “EEEE-le-eee-ctri-i-city”, he continued, “Fear of things that cannot be explained/Addicted to conspiracy theories/To all such human beings/Einstein’s letter to his daughter/ I want you to read this: “Love is light, love is our essence,” and mentions famous fake news. Sadly, in today’s world where fragments of meaning are propagated endlessly, Hikaru Utada declares, “The story engraved in our details/It will not end even if the letters disappear from this planet” and presents a single conclusion. It disappears into the distance along with the sound of the saxophone. While skillfully interweaving the dichotomies of pop/alternative, Japanese/English, universality/unnaturalness, and even reality/fiction, it is the result of slipping through all axes of opposition and continuing to flow between itself and the times. There is “Hikaru Utada” who stands up. This musician is now heading into the next phase, making his very existence seem like something out of science fiction.
release information
Album “SCIENCE FICTION” Hikaru Utada
2024/4/10 RELEASE
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