About This Site
Each month I select 20 songs (10 songs twice a month) that I am either hooked on or am curious about. Most of the music I select are rock, hip-hop, R&B and pop songs.
My song selection comes from 20-30 CDs I get from various sources each month, as well as recommendations from iTunes and Amazon. I also check out the charts in US, UK and Japan.
Hikaru Utada is one of the biggest popstars in Japan (if not THE biggest). She tried to crossover to the US market and released her debut album, Exodus in 2004. Despite having a superstar producer, Timbaland producing the album, it didn’t crossover well to the US audience (though it was a hit in her native country of Japan). Utada was raised in New York part of her life, so compared to other Japanese popstarlets, her English is fluent. For her second US album, she teamed up with Mariah Carey’s producers, which I’m still not sure was the right move. This single totally sounds like a cheap knock off of Mariah. Utada is a good singer, but not a great singer like Mariah, and when she tries to sing in high note toward the end of the song, it is so thin that it is almost so hard to listen to. I also noticed on her previous album, Exodus, that Utada’s English songwriting is kind of weird. I think she has true talent when comes to mixing English and Japanese lyrics, but when she has to use 100% English, the lyrics are either too literal or unrelateable.
Embodying the rags-to-riches rap dream, Jay-Z pulled himself up by his bootstraps as a... >Read more
2 comments:
I agree this song sounds too much like Mariah and doesn't really work for her.
i like song and her voice. comparisons to old school mariah is a good thing
Post a Comment