Hello Friends!
The reviews are back!! After a long hiatus, I’ve decided to bring them back. The reason why I haven’t posted any reviews since last year was because I had to think about “What could I bring to the table that’s unique?”, “What do I have to say beyond this comic sucks or is good?” And I realized that’s what was holding me up, I was focusing too much on the comics aspect and not opening it up to other passions of mine.
Now as you can tell from the title of this post, I’m going to start the new reviews with J-pop (Japanese pop music for the uninitiated), I’m starting with one of my favorite artists, Hikaru Utada! (Seriously, I LOVE this girl’s music………….yes, even “Easy Breezy”) Now instead of going through her whole discography I’m only going to cherry pick some of her songs now and again, here and there down the road. I’m gonna do other artists but best to start with what you know, right?
A little background first, Hikaru is actually from a musical background. Her father is Teruzane Utada, a record producer and her mother is Junko Utada, an Enka singer. Hikaru’s style definitely has a lot of Enka influence crossed with pop melodies this can be seen really strongly in songs like “Final Distance” and “Beautiful World”, which to me personally makes her a bit unique (well at the height of her popularity, in any case) in the J-pop scene. One could also say that growing up between New York and Tokyo had an influence as well, given how she writes her lyrics (most notably on her English CDs). Hikaru is one of the more successful female pop singers in Japan and has influenced other up and coming singers (Jasmine being one of the newer artist to cite Utada as an influence).
With that out of the way let’s move on to the review! The song I’m going to look at is one that kind of helped introduce Hikaru to many fans in the English speaking market. The song was “Simple & Clean”, this song was used as the English theme for the video game franchise Kingdom Hearts, a game series that fuses the properties of (then) Squaresoft and Disney. At the time of the game’s release in English speaking markets the song hit your ears like a Mack truck of J-pop pleasure (that is if you were a fan of JRPGs and Anime).
Between the interesting melodies and (if you read the last page of the instruction book first) seemingly powerful lyrics, it gave the game a fun, yet epic feel on the veins of Final Fantasy 7, Chrono Trigger or even Secret of Mana……that is of course if you DIDN’T know the behind the scenes stuff.
Now of course, unbeknownst to many gamers at the time, the song was actually a reworking of the Japanese version, “Hikari (Light)” from her Deep River CD AND due to Hikaru not being able to gain the same emotional meaning in the English version, wrote the new chorus hook using the melody from the chorus of “Uso Mitai Na I Love You (The Dubious/Fake “I Love You”)”, another track from the same CD.
You hear this reworked hook right when it fires up, and the overall lyrics tell more of a difficult love story:
Chorus Hook:
“When you walk away
You don’t hear me say please
Oh baby, don’t go
Simple and clean is the way that you’re making me feel tonight
It’s hard to let it go”
Lyric:
“Don’t get me wrong, I love you,
But does that mean I have to meet your father?
When we are older you’ll understand.”
What I meant when I said “No,
I don’t think life is quite that simple?”
(Click here to listen to the full song of “Simple & Clean”)
(Click here to listen to the full version of “Uso Mitai Na I Love You” for comparison of the hook)
Now before you go getting upset, Japanese is a difficult language, EVEN for native speakers in some instances, just like English and trying to translate meanings and emotions that may only exist to a Japanese sensibility into one that may not have the exact poetic imagery can be hard as Hell. Gotta give the girl credit, she worked with what she had. Of course it did make the Jesus allegory in the song a bit WTF to gamers when they first heard it compared to the imagery of the opening cinematic of the game:
Lyric:
“Wish I could prove I love you,
But does that mean I have to walk on water?
When we are older you’ll understand.
It’s enough when I say so
And maybe some things are that simple.”
Again given that Sora and Kairi (two of the three principal leads of the game series) show an interest in each other but never hook up romantically, this doesn’t fully-fully work with the tone of their relationship…………unless Hikaru was hinting at a possible shonen-ai pairing between Sora and Riku (the third lead)……………………or probably not. (DeviantArt already filled that void over the years).
So for a final verdict of “Simple & Clean” by Hikaru Utada, I give it a 4 out of 5. True it doesn’t fit 100% with the series it was meant to be the theme of, but as a love song it’s very interesting lyrically and the melodies in both the regular produced and acoustic versions are top notch.
Be sure to come back next time when I take a look of the other side of the coin and review Hikari and see how that stacks up!
‘Til Next Time
Stay Frosty