[Utada Hikaru] Coming Back to the 23rd Thread♥

[GRACE]

Originally Posted by dreamcrushed

I actually edited my post to be a bit more diplomatic towards you, but it really wasn't needed. But I think if you actually take me up on my suggestion, you will see that you have a lot to learn. Your comment about the "death of the English language" says how much this is needed. No, thank you for playing!

I'd listen, but see, I have this thing about listening to trolls spouting nonsense. I don't listen to them.

[jknza2664]

Originally Posted by GRACE

Hikki probably feels more comfortable in English because, being born in America, she probably learned it from an early age and was comfortable with it in the way most Americans are. Or were, before the texting and internet age began and the death of the English Language began.



I will take this post as a surrender and a recognition of my victory, thank you for playing.

Well that was a pretty distasteful way to bring that whole conversational tangent to a close now wasn't it?

And English (as well as any other language) "dies" several times with the advent of any new medium of communication. Apparently, it's very very dead.

BACK TO HIKKI, SHALL WE? I think I like the verses of Come Back to Me but the chorus really isn't doing it. I think she'll need to take some risks to make a splash stateside. I have a feeling the rest of the album will be a little more interesting because surely Hikki wouldn't permit a whole album of Come Back to Me's under her name?

[Hachimitsu]

You shouldn't waste too much energy on these discussions.. We're supposed to use this topic to share our love for Utada, right?

Here's a light subject: what is your favourite Utada performance ever?

I personally love acoustic music, but I also love intimate performances. So some of my favourites are the internet live, the unplugged concert, or the 20th birthday live. Unlike artists like Ayu who are so glamorous, she just performs in a way that makes her feel comfortable. I really like that (although I like Ayu too). But performances like on Bokura no ongaku are cool too.

[jbrat2219]

Originally Posted by jknza2664

BACK TO HIKKI, SHALL WE? I think I like the verses of Come Back to Me but the chorus really isn't doing it. I think she'll need to take some risks to make a splash stateside. I have a feeling the rest of the album will be a little more interesting because surely Hikki wouldn't permit a whole album of Come Back to Me's under her name?

After a few listens I've realized I like the verses a lot more too! I wish the chorus was up to par though...

[dreamcrushed]

Originally Posted by GRACE

I'd listen, but see, I have this thing about listening to trolls spouting nonsense. I don't listen to them.

I am not a troll spouting nonsense. I clearly explained the weaknesses of your points in a logical fashion. I am not trying to stir up a futile argument. Really, a lot of your points are not facts, like kang daesung has said. You are only making yourself look a fool to people who have some knowledge of linguistics.

/already OT by the time I posted! Sorry!/

[haikudasai]

Originally Posted by Lieke

You shouldn't waste too much energy on these discussions.. We're supposed to use this topic to share our love for Utada, right?

Here's a light subject: what is your favourite Utada performance ever?

I personally love acoustic music, but I also love intimate performances. So some of my favourites are the internet live, the unplugged concert, or the 20th birthday live. Unlike artists like Ayu who are so glamorous, she just performs in a way that makes her feel comfortable. I really like that (although I like Ayu too). But performances like on Bokura no ongaku are cool too.

I will always love her "With or Without You" Unplugged cover.

[rikku411]

Originally Posted by jknza2664

BACK TO HIKKI, SHALL WE? I think I like the verses of Come Back to Me but the chorus really isn't doing it. I think she'll need to take some risks to make a splash stateside. I have a feeling the rest of the album will be a little more interesting because surely Hikki wouldn't permit a whole album of Come Back to Me's under her name?

I think we can trust Hikki to surprise us. I mean, none of her albums so far have the same sound throughout, so "Come Back To Me" might be a black sheep of sorts

She doesn't want to be known as someone who just produces one type of song, so she won't permit it! xD

[njanjayrp]

Originally Posted by Luv ~Venus~

Wow dude. You couldn't be more of a jackass than that.

lol so what? That still doesn't make it any less true

[Kaiouforever]

If we could get another "Hotel Lobby" I'd be very satisfied. =] And you're right about her having a lot of different styles, I think we'll see a nice variety on the album.

[jknza2664]

I love love love the Utada United performance of Devil Inside - it trumps the album version easily. I actually rather hate the album version - it's too minimalistic in its production. If I recall, Kremlin Dusk was also done well on that tour.

Thinking about it, I would actually love for Exodus to be re-recorded with better production value. The whole thing had gorgeous melodies and great songs overall but the production felt incredibly cheap.

[Andrenekoi]

English is one of the easiest languages in the world to learn and work with (Being mandarim the hardest one, and Brazillian Portuguese the second one)... Even if my english is a little rusty cause I don't write in this language a lot today, I can understand it rather easily...

Here in Brazil a lot of young people thinks that English sounds better than Portuguese and that songs in this language are better... and thinks that Japanese sounds weird and that Portuguese is a very ugly language... So... I don't think that the "English is hardest" or "Asian languages sounds better" are much more than opinions or thinking that languages you can't understand properly are better sounding (because... if you can't undertand the language you are listening, to you it you be only random sounds in a music, not words or anything like that... even if you know the translation, you will not unterstand what exactely are most of the sounds you are hearing)

And pop music is shallow... not only in the USA, but in any place in the world... pop music is made to sell a lot... if you make something very deep or very personal, people will not see themselves in the music, cause it will become too specific... but you still can find some good meaning in pop music (Ayumi and Hikki in Japan have some pretty lyrics... in EUA, some Madonna and Beyonce lyrics have interesting meanings too... etc)

Ayumi has A Song for XX, that is a beautiful song with good lyrics? She still has Audience, that is poppy, comercial and empty...

Come back to me sounds a lot like First Love era Hikki... when she became famous in Japan using something very common and generic in the EUA that nobody was using in Japan yet...

Anyway.. music is not only about the lyrics you know? If you can listen to something in a language you can't really understand entirelly, why can't you listen to something in English and just enjoy the sounds and rythm?

[jbrat2219]

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

English is one of the easiest languages in the world to learn and work with (Being mandarim the hardest one, and Brazillian Portuguese the second one)... Even if my english is a little rusty cause I don't write in this language a lot today, I can understand it rather easily...

Here in Brazil a lot of young people thinks that English sounds better than Portuguese and that songs in this language are better... and thinks that Japanese sounds weird and that Portuguese is a very ugly language... So... I don't think that the "English is hardest" or "Asian languages sounds better" are much more than opinions or thinking that languages you can't understand properly are better sounding (because... if you can't undertand the language you are listening, to you it you be only random sounds in a music, not words or anything like that... even if you know the translation, you will not unterstand what exactely are most of the sounds you are hearing)

And pop music is shallow... not only in the USA, but in any place in the world... pop music is made to sell a lot... if you make something very deep or very personal, people will not see themselves in the music, cause it will become too specific... but you still can find some good meaning in pop music (Ayumi and Hikki in Japan have some pretty lyrics... in EUA, some Madonna and Beyonce lyrics have interesting meanings too... etc)

Ayumi has A Song for XX, that is a beautiful song with good lyrics? She still has Audience, that is poppy, comercial and empty...

Come back to me sounds a lot like First Love era Hikki... when she became famous in Japan using something very common and generic in the EUA that nobody was using in Japan yet...

Anyway.. music is not only about the lyrics you know? If you can listen to something in a language you can't really understand entirelly, why can't you listen to something in English and just enjoy the sounds and rythm?

I like the way Brazilian Portuguese sounds..... ;_;

And I guess that's a good way of putting it. The rhythm is nice I guess. But I think at that part where she goes rather high and such is where the song kind of loses it for me... =/

[dreamcrushed]

Originally Posted by rikku411

I think we can trust Hikki to surprise us. I mean, none of her albums so far have the same sound throughout, so "Come Back To Me" might be a black sheep of sorts

She doesn't want to be known as someone who just produces one type of song, so she won't permit it! xD

Yes! There's always variety on her albums (although people who didn't like HS tended to call it "samey") I don't think we should expect a whole album of similar songs -- there really isn't any consistent prior evidence. I'm really excited to see the direction this album will take.

I'm also telling myself to not really expect anything so there will be minimal disappointment (it's worked for me ever since I became enough a fan to track her releases). But It's kind of hard for me not to feel a bit anxious whenever I'm reminded that she worked with Stargate because we all know she can do much better than a song like Come Back To Me. She doesn't do generic very well (I think she does have her own musical personality).

Also, I don't think the production value on Exodus is cheap when listening to it without a comparison. But compared with Ultra Blue, there is a huge difference. They were mastered by the same company, but with different mastering guy. But I have a feeling you're talking about something different... Do you mean different arrangement?

And LOL @ the "overrated", "emperor/queen of japan" tags. I wonder how many we'll have before the album is released!

[rikku411]

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

Anyway.. music is not only about the lyrics you know? If you can listen to something in a language you can't really understand entirelly, why can't you listen to something in English and just enjoy the sounds and rythm?

That's actually a good point! I listened to a lot of Hikki songs without reading the translation, until recently, but before I didn't know what the song was about. It just felt or sounded beautiful.

Hikki's a good lyricist, but if it were someone else singing an empty song, I wouldn't know, and I'd like it nonetheless (till maybe reading the lyrics and convincing myself I know better.)

But I guess maybe because I understand English I sometimes like to feel that I should listen to something with substance.

Empty nice-sounding songs have their place, too! Like you said, you can just enjoy the music.

(And what you said was well-written, are you sureee English isn't your first language? Haha, I kid.)

[jbrat2219]

Now when a song is mastered, what does that mean? Touched up?

[ayumisrael]

First! Happy birthday to hikki! one of my favorites
I hope she had a great birthday!!

Originally Posted by jknza2664

BACK TO HIKKI, SHALL WE? I think I like the verses of Come Back to Me but the chorus really isn't doing it. I think she'll need to take some risks to make a splash stateside. I have a feeling the rest of the album will be a little more interesting because surely Hikki wouldn't permit a whole album of Come Back to Me's under her name?

I feel the same towards the song, the verses are good, hikki's voice in the chorus bugs me a bit I think, not the composition.

Originally Posted by Lieke

You shouldn't waste too much energy on these discussions.. We're supposed to use this topic to share our love for Utada, right?

Here's a light subject: what is your favourite Utada performance ever?

I personally love acoustic music, but I also love intimate performances. So some of my favourites are the internet live, the unplugged concert, or the 20th birthday live. Unlike artists like Ayu who are so glamorous, she just performs in a way that makes her feel comfortable. I really like that (although I like Ayu too). But performances like on Bokura no ongaku are cool too.

I liked the unplugged perfromances I think my favorite from there is (also generally) FINAL DISTANCE. UU2006 wasn't entertaining so much, it was something between simple and glamarous, I liked most of the vocals performances of the songs but I listened to the MP3s more than watching it because it was a bit boring watching hikki going left to right in most of the tour. It wasn't an eye drawer, just ear (in most songs) I prefer if she would do more story-lined stuff and a bit more glam (since she doesn't dance and I don't want her to) but I guess it's not her thing.

Originally Posted by rikku411

I think we can trust Hikki to surprise us. I mean, none of her albums so far have the same sound throughout, so "Come Back To Me" might be a black sheep of sorts

Unfortunately, she permitted (and made) HEART STATION =\
There were 4 songs I could really like (and still listen to).

[Luv ~Venus~]

Originally Posted by GRACE

The most popular songs in America generally lack any sort of substance, I don't think it's a "stereotype," because it's true. They're good for a quick fix, but then they lose their spark after a while and you move onto the next big thing. I personally think it's because the English language is so hard to work with, in most other languages, you can preserve flow and beauty while still saying profound things because the language flows better. English, the mutated love child of more languages than you can count, doesn't often have that melodic flow, it's a very hard language.

"They're good for a quick fix, but then they lose their spark after a while and you move onto the next big thing." Generally all music is like that. IMO, no one is original when it comes to music. It just depends on who does it better in that particular territory and how it reaches the audience. =/

And seriously, English is hard to work with? Sorry, I don't think that it's really that hard to work with when foreign singers who know little of or nothing of English has English lyrics in their songs.

Originally Posted by Yum!Fruit_Salad!

If it's generic, lyrically repetitive and uninteresting, do you really want to make American-styled music? Now, if the music wasn't generic and the lyrics were a tiny bit better, than there would be no problems. Not every American-styled song is like that (generic and all that), it's just unfornate Hikki happened to adopt that.

Stargate did Beautiful Liar? Ugh, I dislike them even more.

Oh come on with the lyrics speech. Even if it's "lyrically repetitive", does it really make a song bad? It depends on more than just lyrics to know whether or not the song is bad. IMO, people judge songs more on the sound/melody/beat etc than the lyrics. I mean, seriously. If it wasn't for people translating foreign songs for us, none of us would really give a two cent crap about the lyrics. Heck, some people still don't give a two cent crap about the lyrics and don't even understand the message that the singer is trying to say in the song. Just as long as the song sounds good.

And Beautiful Lair was the hotness. Still love the song til this day. I really don't understand the Stargate hate just like the Timberland hate. Yea, Timberland's stuff sounds the same but hell, they are catchy and good. Stargate's songs have some differences in the melody and stuff but IMO, it's just that singers tend to sing the same tone as each other when it comes to their songs which is where I think some of you get that "their stuff is generic etc."

Originally Posted by jbrat2219

If you think that's what makes good music in general, I feel sorry for you. Not all American music is generic and not all of it is terrible. Like I said, I hope she makes real music when she's better established. Yeah maybe it takes a song like this for her to be a hit, but I don't want her to continue to make generic music blending in with everyone else when I know she's better than that.

"I hope she makes real music...." What's not so real about her music? Hikki has always had songs that's of the R&B genre but with most of them, of course, in a different language. Come Back To Me is no different from what her R&B songs sound like and are about. You're making it seem like she's selling herself out when she's really not and never have done. I should be the one who feels sorry for you because you just don't seem to understand that for some reason.

[dreamcrushed]

Originally Posted by jbrat2219

Now when a song is mastered, what does that mean? Touched up?

I think I'm getting it mixed up with "mixing". Mixing is when all of the sounds are leveled (some more in the fore, some more in the back, some in between) to get the final song.

A definition, courtesy of thefreedictionary.com:

mix:
5a. To combine (two or more audio tracks or channels) to produce a composite audio recording.
b. To produce (a soundtrack or recording) in this manner.

I'm starting to think mixing and mastering fall pretty much under the same general set of duties. And example: HS (Mastered by Tom Coyne). Argh. I hope that helped.

[GRACE]

Originally Posted by Luv ~Venus~

"They're good for a quick fix, but then they lose their spark after a while and you move onto the next big thing." Generally all music is like that. IMO, no one is original when it comes to music. It just depends on who does it better in that particular territory and how it reaches the audience. =/

And seriously, English is hard to work with? Sorry, I don't think that it's really that hard to work with when foreign singers who know little of or nothing of English has English lyrics in their songs.

Thank you for demonstrating my point, you win a cookie.

[jknza2664]

On the subject of Hikki lyrics, I actually really like those in the bridge sections of Passion and Making Love which seem intensely personal, sandwiched in songs that speak more generally or create an atmosphere. Or lyrics like in WINGS which are just about everyday sort of things I think she does very well. On the other hand, I think Ayu does the opposite - singing about larger themes of fate, fear, materialism, "the times", etc. - very well. They're kind of like lyrical counterbalances to me.