[Utada Hikaru] Midsummer Rain Shower ♪٩(✿′ᗜ‵✿)۶♪ the 53rd thread

[bluegie]

Hmmmn, I think it's not easy to convince listeners with just simple melodies. Hikki and Adele are praised by their writings and vocals as well. I believe ayu's lyrics are really good (at least her older ones), but she's more about visualizations and rich arrangements. And honestly, ayu (and Madonna as well)'s vocals are not that great (if you compared them to Adele and hikki). It'll be much harder for ayu to convince listeners when she makes songs with simple melodies and arrangements.

And I think hikki has experienced such concept way before CWTC (tho I must say she has been heading to this direction since that moment). Dareka and BML were both done with simple melodies and arrangement. They were just, well, out of place in ULTRA BLUE .

[Andrenekoi]

^But they don't really have that 70's jpop vibe as her current songs do. About Ayu and Madonna, both A One and Rebel Heart were really well received... And even if their vocals aren't perfect live, they can sound gorgeous on studio (the same is true for Hikki)

Adele is... Well, I find her music to sound really cheap.

[bluegie]

Oh you're talking about 70's jpop vibe. Hmmn, the only 70's artist that I listen is Momoe Yamaguchi, so I don't really know if hikki's current music has that 70's vibe .

[ExodusUK]

Midsummer Rain Shower is about her mother, isn't it?

[visionfactory]

Originally Posted by bluegie

Hmmmn, I think it's not easy to convince listeners with just simple melodies. Hikki and Adele are praised by their writings and vocals as well

Greatest lyrics like "You're easy breezy and i'm japanese"

[bluegie]

I don't count hikki's English work .

[Next_Level29]

midsummer rain shower is played 24/7 in my room. I adore it <3

[Surreal17]

I really like Manatsu no Tooriame. I'm not a huge fan of Utada but this song is beautiful.

[kotora]

Is she trying to be Adele now..

[Zahara]

Originally Posted by visionfactory

Greatest lyrics like "You're easy breezy and i'm japanese"

If all of her lyrics were like that, I would agree with you, but seeing as how there are not...

[thinkingoutloud89]

actually..hikki is not really a good live singer. she sounds pretty amazing in studio though.
ayu had much more emotion in her voice, even if her range isn't that great. Sadly that is also gone.

[bluegie]

I kinda disagree that ayu has more emotion in her voice. I think hikki and ayu are about the same. It's just that most of ayu's work (esp her early works) were mostly about things around her, while hikki didn't really emphasize her life in her music. So maybe that is why you think ayu has more emotion in her voice.

I find out that many artists doing the same error. In the beginning their emotions were always great. When they tried to improve their vocal techniques, somehow they forgot that emotions are as important. They improved the techniques, but their newer songs were lacking emotions.

So I'm glad that hikki doesn't forget about emotions in the new songs .

Originally Posted by kotora

Is she trying to be Adele now..

Maybe Adele copied hikki . Just joking lol.

[Andrenekoi]

I don't agree Ayu's newer work lack emotion... But they do work with a different set of emotion nowadays... She can pass really complex emotions with her voice only, like the mocking sarcasm in SLT, the bittersweet optimism in blossom, the overall self-depreciating sarcasm in the next LOVE, the melancholic determination in Do it again, etc. Her music doesn't deal as much with saddness, angst and dispair as before, and as those are more pungent feelings. IMO she isn't lacking feeling, but as her age the feelings she is singing about are more complex.

And the same can be said about Utada... the First Love Utada wouldn't produce those new songs, not even feeling-wise. The song for her mother on the SC2 is really complex, more than teenager Hikki would ever be able to produce.

Now, both can't sing to save their lifes live, Ayu is more of a theatrical performer, always were, and when performing live the emotion translates both to the ears and to the eyes. Hikki is a vocal performer, and she does have more emotion on her voice than Ayu, but you can pretty much ignore her while on stage because she isn't all that interesting to watch and looks extremely unconfortable, but the emotion on her voice compensates this.

[orbitalaspect]

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

I don't agree Ayu's newer work lack emotion... But they do work with a different set of emotion nowadays... She can pass really complex emotions with her voice only, like the mocking sarcasm in SLT, the bittersweet optimism in blossom, the overall self-depreciating sarcasm in the next LOVE, the melancholic determination in Do it again, etc. Her music doesn't deal as much with saddness, angst and dispair as before, and as those are more pungent feelings. IMO she isn't lacking feeling, but as her age the feelings she is singing about are more complex.

And the same can be said about Utada... the First Love Utada wouldn't produce those new songs, not even feeling-wise. The song for her mother on the SC2 is really complex, more than teenager Hikki would ever be able to produce.

Now, both can't sing to save their lifes live, Ayu is more of a theatrical performer, always were, and when performing live the emotion translates both to the ears and to the eyes. Hikki is a vocal performer, and she does have more emotion on her voice than Ayu, but you can pretty much ignore her while on stage because she isn't all that interesting to watch and looks extremely unconfortable, but the emotion on her voice compensates this.

Utada has evolved though, whereas Ayu has tried on different things but never really pushed into something new. Utada's writing has also evolved. Gone are the days of more straightforward songs like First Love, Automatic, and even DISTANCE. For Ayu, the writing style is still simpler but now more metaphorical and more about complex and hard to describe experiences.

Perhaps it's been harder to see any evolution in Ayumi's career because she has so many records and it's only recent that we can actually tell one apart from the other. With Utada, there's a clear difference between Distance and FIRST LOVE, ULTRA BLUE and DEEP RIVER, even HEART STATION and the songs she included on SC2. So, we've had much more noticeable shifts with Utada than with Ayu. (Also, I think an unspoken reason Utada went on hiatus was because she wasn't sure what direction to go in. There wasn't as dramatic a shift in her style from ULTRA BLUE to HEART STATION, so I imagine she probably felt stuck and needed to reset.)

I can agree with you that Ayu isn't emotionless or lacking emotion. But Ayu has always been an artist that uses the music as much as her voice to convey emotion. I think it's why songs like Manatsu and Hanataba work well for Hikki fans, but songs like curtain call are often brushed aside by Ayu fans.

My only gripe with Ayu that I don't have with Utada is that Utada sounds like she's trying to do something memorable. With A ONE, Colours, LOVE again, and Party Queen, Ayu sounds like she's just written more songs, nothing particularly special or significant. I don't loathe any of those albums, but I hear an artist that's going through the motions rather than investing her passion into the record. Maybe that's just me. But when I listen to Secret or (miss)understood, I hear an artist who wanted those albums in her discography. When I listen to Colours, I hear an artist that just wanted to get that year's album done and out.

[bluegie]

Oh (miss)understood was definitely one of her better produced albums even though it was not well-received by her Japanese fans. I also think that was the time when ayu wanna push herself harder to create new sounds (again, not really accepted by her Japanese fans). If (m)u was well received, we might see more experimental songs from her, cuz she went back to her comfort zone in Secret.

But anywayz, my bad, should focus on hikki instead of bringing ayu out .

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

but you can pretty much ignore her while on stage because she isn't all that interesting to watch and looks extremely unconfortable, but the emotion on her voice compensates this.

Ah she was getting less enthusiastic on stages as time moved on. I remember when she sang BLUE in Wild Life, she was practically walking around the stage, looking down the floor while singing that song (and she couldn't hit those high notes). That was the moment that made me think, "was she bored?". She wasn't really like that when she did Hikaru no 5.

[Andrenekoi]

Originally Posted by orbitalaspect

My only gripe with Ayu that I don't have with Utada is that Utada sounds like she's trying to do something memorable. With A ONE, Colours, LOVE again, and Party Queen, Ayu sounds like she's just written more songs, nothing particularly special or significant. I don't loathe any of those albums, but I hear an artist that's going through the motions rather than investing her passion into the record. Maybe that's just me. But when I listen to Secret or (miss)understood, I hear an artist who wanted those albums in her discography. When I listen to Colours, I hear an artist that just wanted to get that year's album done and out.

(My final ayu comment over here, I swear xD I only mentioned her first to point out the trend Hikki was following )

Impressions are a funny, I don't like how Secret was executed at all... To me it sounds like a collection of seasonal singles without any real though put behind on how they would work together... Actually, IMO, she felt exausted and dried out during Secret and Guilty, forced an attempt of something new on Next Level by following the trends of the moment, did try some new sounds on RnRC with variable level of success and was able to deliver a work that had a really strong artistic merit on both Love songs and Party Queen, being Love songs as an artistic yet poppish record filled with potential hits and Party Queen a far more artistic than poppish experience where every piece don't work that much alone but have far more depth than the ordinary pop record when every thing is tied together. Love Again works more as a concept than as a record IMO, and it felt like she going back to a safer place after going too far from the pop aesthetic during Party Queen... It seens like it would have worked if it wasn't for the Maro scandal. Colours and A One still plays it safe, the first one by sticking to the trends, even if she never went into that trend before, and A One by basically playing it safe on every level. Now, I found A One to be really bland once it was released, but I notice I go back to it more than I did to Colours or Love Again... It has really beautiful melodies and it's VERY easy to listen.

And it's really easier to notice when Hikki goes to a different direction because she doesn't release a new album every year... Unlike Ayu, who will have some experiemental stuff side by side with stuff that sound like whatever she did just last year (something that may mean 2 albums ago ), Hikki has more time to mature herself as a musician between releases. Even so, she failed to deliver anything remotely coherent from an aesthetic point of view until Heart Station, her albums before that being basically collections of AMAZING songs that had pretty much nothing to do with each other... She also never had a main concept that unified any of her whole albums, all of them just feeling like they were named after the song she liked the most on it.

This time it seens like the album will be a package as a whole, not only by sounding as a unity like Heart Station, but being centered around an aesthetic and a theme... And this is something completely new for her as an artist, so I'm excited!

Originally Posted by bluegie

Ah she was getting less enthusiastic on stages as time moved on. I remember when she sang BLUE in Wild Life, she was practically walking around the stage, looking down the floor while singing that song (and she couldn't hit those high notes). That was the moment that made me think, "was she bored?". She wasn't really like that when she did Hikaru no 5.

Yeap... I believe I only watched Wild Life entirely once! Even if she never really looked confortable, she at least seemed to be having fun during Budokan and United, and this made the whole shows far better to watch. And I LOVE Hikki live when she is on a good day, so this is really sad to me.

[ahtka-chan]

Originally Posted by bluegie

I remember when she sang BLUE in Wild Life, she was practically walking around the stage, looking down the floor while singing that song (and she couldn't hit those high notes). That was the moment that made me think, "was she bored?". She wasn't really like that when she did Hikaru no 5.

First of all, the notes on BLUE are extremely hard to hit. She doesn't have a vocal coach or take vocal lessons so, even if she had, hitting those notes after almost 2/3 of the concert would still be a hard feat.

I just think she looked "happier" on Budokan and UNITED because they weren't "goodbye" concerts and she was younger there. Her approach about her music was/is different now.

[bluegie]

^Oh I do know that BLUE was one hell song that is so hard to sing, and I think someone mentioned before that hikki loved to compose something so hard that even she can't hit the notes properly . It's just that she couldn't really hit the notes (well actually she did hit them, but really forcefully), combined with the visual (looking down on the floor, looking like she wasn't sure why she was there), gave me a really hard imprint in my memory lol.

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

Even so, she failed to deliver anything remotely coherent from an aesthetic point of view until Heart Station, her albums before that being basically collections of AMAZING songs that had pretty much nothing to do with each other... She also never had a main concept that unified any of her whole albums, all of them just feeling like they were named after the song she liked the most on it.

This time it seens like the album will be a package as a whole, not only by sounding as a unity like Heart Station, but being centered around an aesthetic and a theme... And this is something completely new for her as an artist, so I'm excited!

Actually I think DEEP RIVER managed to give out a coherent feeling to me. I dunno how to say it, but it feels like different songs about different life stories are all so vividly colourful, and somehow the colours find their ways to flow with each other. Yet, the image of the album is black and white (or grey), which totally against the colours. I think DR is one of the masterpieces. Nothing can beat it in her discography (not even HEART STATION, which I think it's her second best in terms of album quality).

Again that's just my thought. Let's keep on debating peacefully lol .

[Andrenekoi]

Originally Posted by bluegie

^Oh I do know that BLUE was one hell song that is so hard to sing, and I think someone mentioned before that hikki loved to compose something so hard that even she can't hit the notes properly . It's just that she couldn't really hit the notes (well actually she did hit them, but really forcefully), combined with the visual (looking down on the floor, looking like she wasn't sure why she was there), gave me a really hard imprint in my memory lol.




Actually I think DEEP RIVER managed to give out a coherent feeling to me. I dunno how to say it, but it feels like different songs about different life stories are all so vividly colourful, and somehow the colours find their ways to flow with each other. Yet, the image of the album is black and white (or grey), which totally against the colours. I think DR is one of the masterpieces. Nothing can beat it in her discography (not even HEART STATION, which I think it's her second best in terms of album quality).

Again that's just my thought. Let's keep on debating peacefully lol .

DR is also my 2nd favorite album from hers... But to me it does sound like a collection of amazing songs instead of a close package. This isn't really a problem, most people won't realease a full album of disconected but amazing songs.

[thinkingoutloud89]

uhm I did not wnat to start this so I giving my statement and I hope this comes to a close:

1) I only wanted to say that Hikki isn't that greta of a live singer. That said, she is also not bad - but her own songs do her justice sometimes and she maybe should change them up for live performances.

2) When Ayu lost her hearing she also lost control over her voice to some extend - this resulted in some unpleasent chantings (especially live) that take away from her unique emotions (that weren't only there because of the lyrics - songs like A song for, memorial adress, M or fairyland ... and very recent Last minute strike beacuse of her). That said she is also a good musican.

3) Overall Utada is the one that is more experimenting without venturing to far from her own sound - yet again she is a lazy girl tbqh-

4) Ayu tried nearly everything - and that is what makes her unique.


To conclued this: The wtwo are by no means compareable. Yes, Utada seems to be more what we call a "Musican" and "artist" - yet only beacuse she does not seem at manufractured. But we all know ayu is pulling string behind the scenes ever since she bacame famous. Both are unique in a way, and both have their own style.