[Utada Hikaru] Hikki's international adventure(s) and critical success

[sxesven]

Curious to hear some opinions on this.

BADモード released this year, and in addition to it being pretty damn solid (will gladly discuss this too in more detail) I was also surprised somewhat at the attention it received, including a Pitchfork review and some sort of darling status in hip indie-ish circles (if I just stepped on some toes - apologies, not the intention). Now, perhaps BADモード specifically also just caters a bit more to hip music trends than Ayu's material generally does (I mean, A.G. Cook got involved, and of course Hikki's been on an interesting path down dream poppy R&B for a while), but it still caught me a bit off guard. While both Fantôme and Hatsukoi were also excellent albums, they did not get picked up outside of the Jpop crowd (less hip, perhaps?).

To what extent has Hikki's (well, Utada's, to be precise) international adventure contributed to this? Exodus was a weird era - with Easy Breezy somehow chosen as its lead single (make no mistake, it's a fun song that perhaps received an unfair amount of backlash for what certainly were intentionally goofy lyrics, but the album has such a wealth of good material to choose from!), being promoted on Disney Channel and such. Weird, because, have you ever tried it again? It's really damn good and was way ahead of its time production-wise. This Is The One is a bit safer, but also a great album with some really good tracks. Of course, Hikki received a bit more than usual exposure too with being featured on the Kingdom Hearts' soundtracks.

Interested to hear some perspectives. I could get into much more detail, but I think it's enough to kick off a discussion (also typing all this on my phone because I don't have a laptop, have mercy). What other factors helped?

Tie-in question (I considered posting this in the Ayu chat room, too): if Ayu had followed a similar route (an attempt at the US market, a song featuring in an internationally popular video game series), would she have had similar potential? Could M(A)DE IN JAPAN have had (indie) darling success? The upcoming album? Why or why not?