Latest news with #Utada
GMA Network
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- GMA Network
Hikaru Utada sings 'First Love' on 'First Take' 26 years after song's release
Hikaru Utada took us all back to 1999 as she performed her hit song "First Love" on the Japanese YouTube channel "First Take." Accompanied by piano, she delivered a heartfelt and emotional version of her hit song 26 years after its release. "First Love" was among the tracks included in Utada's debut Japanese-language studio album with the same name. Shortly after its release, the song quickly became a classic hit. The album also remains the highest-selling Japanese album with nationwide sales of eight million copies. In 2022, Netflix released the Japanese series "First Love," which took inspiration from Utada's songs. It starred Takeru Satoh and Hikari Mitsushima. —Jade Veronique Yap/MGP, GMA Integrated News
SoraNews24
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- SoraNews24
Utada Hikaru sings incredible new one-take version of 'First Love,' 26 years after original release
J-pop mega star returns to the biggest hit of her career as an adult, with some help from a special musical partner from her past. They say you never forget your first love, but it's just as true that no one ever forgets Utada Hikaru's 'First Love.' Though it wasn't the J-pop recording star's first single release, 'First Love' is by far Utada's biggest hit, and also the title of her first Japanese-language album, which was released in 1999 and remains, to this day, the best-selling album of all time in Japan. Originally recorded when Utada was just 15 years old, 'First Love' was a pop cultural phenomenon in Japan, and is one of a handful of songs that just about everyone in the country under the age of 50 has sung at least once at karaoke. But no one has ever sung it quite like Utada has, and so she's returned to sing 'First Love' once again in a brand-new video. This isn't some slickly edited, heavily sound-engineered self-cover, either. Utada was the most recent guest on YouTube video series The First Take, in which famous Japanese musicians have exactly one take in which to perform their biggest hits in a single live recording session. So with only one shot, how did she do? She absolutely nailed it. After putting on her headset and letting out a 'Hmmm…okay, let's do this,' Utada waits for the first notes of the melody to play, then throws her voice into a rendition of her signature song that starts out startlingly familiar to those who've heard the original, but then goes on to reveal new layers. The sole instrumental accompaniment is a piano played by Kei Kawano, who produced and arranged the original recording of 'First Love.' According to The First Take this is the pair's first time to perform together since that recording, and with no other instrumentation or backing vocals to get in the way, there's an extremely pure quality to the combination of Utada's voice and Kawano's piano. At the time of release of the original 'First Love,' Utada was praised for her plaintive vocals, which felt mature beyond her years as she sang of a love that couldn't last, but which she'd never forget. Now, 25-plus years later, her performance is just as strong, but with an added vocal weight that comes from maturity and life experience acquired in the ensuing quarter-century. Utada recorded the original 'First Love' as a teen, but she's now a full-grown adult who's been married and divorced twice, given birth to a son, and lost her mother. She's undoubtedly gained several new perspectives on her feelings about love and loss, which give this new recording of 'First Love' its own unique character without contradicting the original's emotion. As she finished the song, Utada somewhat sheepishly says 'I always say thank you when I finish singing at concerts, so it feels weird being silent and not saying anything here,' revealing that she was very much in a live-performance frame of mind while singing before adding 'Thank you so much.' It's a moving video for fans, who've reacted with comments including: 'National treasure.' 'Just like that, I'm taken back to my youth.' 'The original version feels like it's someone singing who's about to cry because they broke up with someone they still can't let go of. The new one feels like someone looking through an old photo album, thinking back tenderly on the feelings they had at the time.' 'It doesn't matter how talented of an artist covers it, no one can sing it like she can. Utada Hikaru is one of a kind.' 'I can't believe it's been 26 years since 'First Love' came out…I bet people will still be listening to it 26 years from now.' Odds are that last prediction will come true, so maybe then Utada will come back for a third version of 'First Love.' In the meantime, though, fans will likely have the new video on repeat, and if you need another The First Take masterpiece for your playlist, there's this amazing cover of the Pokémon anime theme from Satoshi's/Ash's Japanese voice actress. Source, top image: YouTube/THE FIRST TAKE ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
WIRED
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- WIRED
Hikaru Utada Would Rather Play CERN Than Coachella
Mar 27, 2025 6:00 AM The Japanese singer-songwriter's new album goes deep on their 'fascination with science.' WIRED Japan took Hikaru Utada to visit the Large Hadron Collider to learn more. Japanese singer-songwriter Hikaru Utada at CERN in Switzerland. Photograph: TIMOTHÉE LAMBRECQ Schrödinger's cat, quantum entanglement—the songs on Hikaru Utada's latest album, Science Fiction , go deeper into the singer-songwriter's 'fascination with science' than they ever have before. Part greatest-hits collection, part reflection on interests they have cultivated for many years, it's a body of work that shows their breadth as an artist. It only seemed fitting, then, that WIRED Japan would invite Utada to Switzerland to visit CERN, one of the world's leading research centers for particle physics, an invitation they quickly accepted. 'CERN is a place I have dreamed of visiting for the past 10 years or so,' Utada says. 'To be honest, being able to go there and talk to the scientists and see the particle accelerator might be even better than performing on the main stage at Coachella [laughs]. I definitely wanted to go.' CERN is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, located on the border between Switzerland and France. Its iconic Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—a gigantic circular accelerator with a circumference of 27 kilometers—made its name in 2012 when it discovered the Higgs boson, the mysterious particle that continues to play a key role in experiments into the origins of the universe. The center's work is not limited to research about how the universe began and the behavior of subatomic particles; it can also lead to advances that have greater impacts on everyday life. For example, in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist who was then working at CERN, developed a system to provide decentralized, real-time access to information within the organization. It became the foundation for the World Wide Web. Hikaru Utada explores ATLAS, a large general-purpose particle detector located 100 meters underground on the CERN main campus, which detects and measures particles accelerated and collided by the Large Hadron Collider. PHOTOGRAPH: TIMOTHÉE LAMBRECQ In recent years, the organization has also been proactively engaged in outreach efforts that fuse art and science. That's why University of Tokyo physicist Junichi Tanaka and Kazuki Kojima, a researcher at KEK (High Energy Accelerator Research Organization) are here. CERN asked the Japanese scientists to accompany Utada and WIRED on our CERN visit. Utada asked the two of them more questions than anyone else. While standing in front of ATLAS (the large general-purpose particle detector located 100 meters under the main CERN campus that detects and measures particles accelerated and collided by the LHC), the conversation around the topic of dark matter was a lively one. Utada: What are you most focused on pursuing at the moment? Kojima: There is a theory in particle physics called the Standard Model, but it can only explain about 5 percent of the mass and energy in the universe. In fact, it is thought that about 26 percent of the mass and energy in the universe is dark matter, and the remaining 70 percent is dark energy. Regardless of dark energy, we know that dark matter exists, but we don't know what it is, and we are currently searching to understand its true nature. Utada: Dark energy is … Kojima: We know almost nothing about it. Tanaka: You could say it's a name that was almost given at random. Utada: OK, so 'dark' here doesn't mean 'not lit,' but rather 'unknowable' or 'unknown.' Tanaka: We don't know anything about dark energy. It has that name because the universe is expanding. But dark matter can be explained by gravity, so we believe it exists. But it's hard to find it. We're trying to measure something when we don't know what it is, so we spend a great deal of time conducting experiments. Utada: It's like proving the existence of something by the absence of something else. Kojima: Yes, that's right. Utada: It's like trying to prove the existence of an invisible man. A room with capacity for 10 people is packed even though there are only nine people there. Or there were 10 people in the room, but traces of 11 people coming from it. Tanaka Yes, yes, that's the idea! Utada explores CERN. Photograph: TIMOTHÉE LAMBRECQ It's a matter of making an analogy to something else or replacing one relationship with another. Utada says they attach a special importance to this act. This means that they regularly transform what exists only in their own mind into clever metaphors by making full use of the knowledge and experience they have cultivated over time, and the words and symbols derived from their intuition. They then diligently carry out the task of communicating these to others. 'When I compared dark matter to an invisible man, I was really happy to hear Tanaka and Kojima say, 'Oh, that's right!'' Utada says. Another thing that made an impression on Utada was the pair's response to their question about what they'd want to convey to the general public who are not experts in science. 'Tanaka thought for a while and then said, 'I guess it would be that there is still so much we don't know.' I thought that was really wonderful,' Utada says. But it's even deeper than that. 'I think the 'knowledge of ignorance,' feeling truly excited by the fact that there are things we don't yet know or don't understand, is a very important perspective,' Utada says. 'Fear comes from ignorance, doesn't it? It is human instinct to fear the dark. It's because we don't know that we feel fear, discrimination, prejudice, violence, and more. So what is the opposite of that? I think it's curiosity and a spirit of inquiry.' The songs on Hikaru Utada's new album Science Fiction go deep into the singer-songwriter's 'fascination with science.' Photograph: TIMOTHÉE LAMBRECQ This story is an excerpt of a piece from WIRED Japan's Quantumpedia March issue . Special thanks to: Presence Switzerland (Federal Department of Foreign Affairs), embassy of Switzerland in Japan, Switzerland tourism, CERN, Geneva tourism, hotel president Wilson Junichi Tanaka (The University of Tokyo), Kazuki Kojima (KEK), Masato Aoki (KEK), Tomoyuki Saito (The University of Tokyo), Nozomu Kaji (Sony Music Labels, Inc.), Mina Okachi (Sony Music Labels, Inc.), Akihico Mori styling by Kyohei Ogawa, hair and makeup by Hisano Komine, project coordination by Erina Anscomb.
