^ From 12 right? The album is still going strong :D

Watching the sales of HEART STATION, i am being mezmerized by it's flow! LOL... it's like up down up down up down up down.... like that!? (^_^) hikki should make more albums like this! just kiddin. Congratulations again hikki for being on the top 10

oh I didn't know that Take 5 was supposed to be on UB interesting

Not the song, as DDD said, the music.

:laugh I was just gonna say that.

What's going on with this thread? I haven't been here for awhile and the thread title has been named "Apple & Cinnamon". Sounds like starbucks music.

It's one of the titles listed under Hikki's name that was produced by Stargate so it's assumed to be for the new English album :)

oh sorry about that

Hey all you dedicated Hikki fans! I have three questions for you. Let's see if you know enough about Hikki to help me answer them. :P

1. Why is Utada's nickname Hikki? AYUmi Hamasaki = Ayu. Yet Koda KUmi is Kuu, too. Why isn't Ayumi HAMAsaki's nickname Hama? I'm kind of confused here.

2. What is up with Utada having lyrics..about herself..in Exodus songs? And I don't mean just about herself, but lines that are like.. DIRECTLY about herself. Animato e.g. talks about her wanting to get into "big business" or something, and that she wants everyone to listen to her music. Does this have some kind of meaning, or did she just decide to write an autobiographic song that no one but her can relate to? IMO the intention of lyrics is mostly to write about yourself or something in such an abstract way that others can interpretate it in their own way and relate to it.

The same's with Kremlin Dusk. Is she really asking us to Listen to the song again? Wtf? "If you like this, will you remember my name? Will you play it again, if you like this?" That seems like a direct request at us, the listeners, to play the song again and buy her album... A little cheap IMO and takes me out of the song's mood. Though there are a few lines in the song that make me go HUH too ("I'm a natural entertainer", "I run a secret propagenda"?). Those songs make me think like she's really asking the listeners to buy her album and that's kind of cheap IMO.

3. Does anyone have a website with ALL of Utada's lyrics? Like for Ayu there are 2 sites or so around with all her lyrics (excluding GUILTY, unfortunately), yet for Utada I can't find such a thing. I have to get most of her lyrics from random blogs that I run into through google. And that's annoying because 1) they usually only have a few lyrics of songs, 2) I don't know how to search in a blog. I want Kairo's lyrics and some other songs, but where?? :/

Thank yuuu! ^_^/

Edit: Actually, I have another question, for those loyal Utada fans that have been around longer:

4. Why the !@#$ did Passion have nr. 4 as the highest rank on Oricon? It's by far my favorite Utada song (and no, not at all because it's in Kingdom Hearts). Of course, that doesn't mean that it should actually get nr. 1 on the charts, but it seems like a LOT of people like this song. I checked out some reviews in the previous topic, and everyone gave Passion a 9-10. Nr 4 seems SO low? Did it suffer from some scandal? Did it get released before on an album, like Prisoner of Love? Did it have tough competition? I really wonder why. :S

Actually that brings up JUST 1 MORE question. It's really short lol. XD

5. Prisoner of Love -- the single -- is the same as the one on the album... I didn't know J-Pop artists released singles from the album later, too. I know Ayu doesn't. And if she does it's a recut/remixed single. Why did she do this? I thought J-Pop artists valued higher single sales more than longer album charting. She should have released it before the album so it had gotten nr. 1. It's such a good song!

6. "I still remember the way that you f~~~ed me"??? I just heard this line in Easy Breeze, in the first chorus. I'm going to ASSUME this is completely wrong, but I replayed it a few times and it really sounds like this. @_@;; Maybe it was done intentional to make it sound like this, but she says something else? On that note, I find it quite annoying that Exodus has a sexistic theme in most songs, yet her other albums are so pretty and sweet (mostly). Why's this?

Okay thank you thank you thank you if you answer my questions! <3333 I'll buy her album (ULTRA BLUE) if you do. <33

Hmm? What's the difference between a song and the music?

1. I think it was because when she was in America, a lot of her classmates called her "hickie" cause it sounds similar to Hikaru... so she just got used to it and now her nickname is Hikki.

2. I think she just wants to experiment a bit, "color outside the lines", if you may. A lot of the songs talk about more sexual topics, such as prostitution in Hotel Lobby. It's just a way for her to experiment and broaden her horizons. The lyrics are very weird, but I think it just adds to the intrigue. I never really cared that she mentioned herself a lot, and I don't think it's because she wants people to buy her album... she already has enough money haha.

3. corichan.com... I think she has a lot of Japanese and Romanji lyrics for various J-pop artists, including Hikki.

4. Passion is effing amazing, there's no denying that. However, its sound is very different from Simple & Clean, so the "strangeness" may not connect with people in Japan or fans of Kingdom Hearts. That's probably not the reason though haha XD. I think it's just declining CD sales... and maybe not enough promotion?

5. I think by the time Prisoner Of Love was completed for HEART STATION, it was too late to make a single out of it... the single HEART STATION / Stay Gold was released a month before the album came out. And plus, EMI probably wanted to capitalize on the popularity of the song due to Last Friends and release a single... it's all about money! :P I think Ayu also had recut singles... like kanariya and Daybreak. Prisoner Of Love (the single) had the -Quiet Version-, so it's not as if the single wasn't worth buying.

I think he meant that Hikki ong made the melody and not the full song (including the lyrics).

And as for u questions:

1. Hikki was givin' that nickname by her classmates I believe but her fans adopted that nickname and started calling her that.

2. I think Utada wanted the american people to know about her with Exodus. So she wrote songs telling about her life and how she wanted to empress them. (My theory..lol)

3. Kiwi-Musume.com

4. Well, Hikki was just returning to Japan and people their were just a little bored with her. Although KH 2 was a huge tie-in for her at the time, she only performed the song once (i believe) and well, that really didn't get through to people.

5. SHe released POL as a recut because of LF. A lot of people brought the album mostly because of that one song. So I guess EMI thought it would be a good idea to release it as a recut single due to HS sales and the Drama. :yes (My theory! :P) Also, recuts are rarely released anymore. The only two people who have released a recut this year was Hikki and Ken Hirai.

Also to add to number 2 -> on Kremlin Dusk, I interpreted it as her talking to an ex-lover, asking him to remember her name, not to the listener...

And yeah s1012h summed up everything nicely.

I'd like to add to the points a couple of other people made, particularly on these three questions:

1). Ayu is off of Ayumi's first name, so is Hikki and Kuu. Hikaru and Kumiko are their two first names, respectively. Hama wouldn't make sense, since that's Ayumi's last name.

2). Simple, lyrics don't always have to be abstract. She can write something everyone can relate to, or not. It's her choice.

4). A lot of times, the stuff that Western fans love don't do as well in Japan. Like how most Western fans LOVE UB, yet it didn't sell as well as HS. HS is more accessible to Japan. The same would go for Passion. A lot of Western fans loved it for it's experimental sound, but that's precisely why Japan didn't take it as well. It got 4 almost precisely because of her namesake and it's tie-in. If that type of song were released by almost anyone else, it wouldn't have done nearly that well.

1. Hmmm. It would make sense that Kumi and Hikaru are first names, but then why are their artist names Koda Kumi and Utada Hikaru, whilst it's Ayumi Hamasaki? I thought in Japan it's last name > first name... So they called Ayumi Hamasaki that way because it sounds better, I guess. Confusing, lol. So that means that Hikki's US artist name is actually her last name? XD Ok, I get it. Please correct me if I'm wrong. ^^

2. Of course she can write it if she wants to, Akutenshi. =P I thought the Exodus lyrics were just quite different from the lyrics of the non-Exodus songs I looked up. That she says the ending of Kremlin Dusk to her ex-husband (the old guy lol) is a good theory, but I wonder what she'd mean by "will you play it again" then... Oh... Then she refers that to the song. Good one~. Though, I thought she divorced in 2007, and not in 2006 when the album was released? Oh, and I know that she doesn't need more Japanese sales of course, but I was thinking more about selling in America. :yes 40.000 sales is WAY too low for her great music.~~~ What were those western people thinking? XD

3. !!!!! I have been looking for a website like that for a LONG time! Kiwi Musume's website is AMAZING! THANK YOU SO MUCH! O_O It even has Kouda Kumi!! Wait.. Kouda? Obviously (s)he's not a fan lol. XD

4. Hmhm, I understand that there's different tastes between Asian/western people, but I generally seem to like songs that are popular in JP (before looking how well they sold, of course :P), so I was surprised that Passion sold so low. All those reasons sound fair, though. :yes

5. Ah okay a tie-in. Thanks!

New bonus question! XD

0. What does she mean with "traveling, rock me harder"? Does she mean like, in a making love~sexual way? That doesn't really fit in with the traveling mood of the song lol.

1. Yeah, Utada (first name) Hikaru (last name) so her US artist name is her Japanese last name. She said it sounded like a brand name I believe and that's where the choice is.

Somewhere along the line, Western fans started addressing them as that because they never really knew which was their first name, and which was their last. On Ayu's CDs, her name is "Ayumi Hamasaki", yet in interviews, they address her as "Hamasaki Ayumi". However, on Hikki and Kuu's CDs, their names are "Utada Hikaru" and "Koda Kumi", so people most likely assumed those were their first names.

I'm sorry if number 2 came off too blunt. ^^; And from what I've heard, she was having problems with her husband before their divorce, as evident in songs like Be My Last, You Make Me Want to Be a Man, and Kremlin Dusk. I think the lyrics on Exodus are so different from her Japanese works because they're written in English, and the English mindset is completely different than the Japanese one. What might be acceptable in an English song could be completely off the wall in a Japanese one. She was simply having fun using themes she never could before, while still staying true to herself.

1. Yeah, her US stage name is her maiden name(or is it her legal last name now? Does anyone know if she kept her ex-husband's after the divorce or if she switched back to Utada?) I assume Ayu's name is written western because it's more ascetically pleasing to see "ayumi hamasaki" rather than "hamasaki ayumi"

2. I'd assume her maritial problems started before the divorce, which could explain Kremlin Dusk's nature. I believe "You Make Me Want to Be a Man" is also to about her husband, isn't it?

:laugh

I agree with Hikki. Utada does sound like a brand name. XD Maybe she should make her on cup of Nissin noodles. :lmfao

Utada Oban Noodles: It brings the Kuma outta you! :bgiggle

hehehe, for some strange reason the name "Utada" makes me think of a car brand. Not normally but when put in the context of being a "brand name," the 1st thing that came to mind was a car lol