Last night, my sister and I went to watch UTADA in concert at The Fillmore in San Francisco.
I’ve been a longtime fan of Utada Hikaru since she first debuted at the end of 1998 with her single “Automatic.” I was a junior in high school and was in my final year of chuugakkou (middle school) in Japanese Saturday School, and I remember the whole class was buzzing about her as soon as she came on the scene. She was an instant hit in Japan, and I remember having her first album First Love on repeat for months — it was one of those albums in which pretty much every track was good, and it amazed me that this girl who was one month younger than me was writing and singing these songs. What talent! She continued to churn out hit after hit in the coming years. The Japanese drama-holic that I am, I came to associate a lot of her songs with the dramas they became theme songs for. First Love with Majo no Jouken, Can You Keep a Secret? with HERO, Sakura Drops with First Love, Flavor of Life with Hana Yori Dango 2, Prisoner of Love with Last Friends, and more recently, Eternally with Innocent Love. (All great songs paired with great, addictive dramas… although now that I look back on them, with the exception of HERO and Hana Yori Dango, they’re all pretty dark, depressing “forbidden love” type dramas. But I digress.)
Utada is one of the few Japanese artists out there who have the English language skills to make for viable success in the international market, since she grew up going back and forth between Japan and New York. Even before Utada set her sights overseas, she was starting to attract international audiences and fans. Unfortunately, her first major debut attempt in the US with the album EXODUS sort of bombed (in my personal opinion), and for a few years, she seemed to go back to focusing on her already-hugely-successful musical career in Japan. She came out with a second album early last year titled This is the One, which seems to show more promise.
This month marked the beginning of Utada’s first official American tour. So far, she’d performed in Honolulu, Los Angeles, and Seattle before coming to San Francisco. I went to the concert under the impression that she would probably be singing mostly if not all English songs as her set list, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that she sang almost half and half in terms of English songs vs. Japanese songs throughout the concert. I think she understood that much of the audience was of Asian background and that there were some fans who had come from Japan as well, and so she catered to the hopes that she’d sing some of Japanese classics. Among the songs she sang were Sakura Drops, Automatic, First Love, Stay Gold and Can You Keep a Secret?. We were able to meet up with my fun coworker Estella and her brother at the concert, and we nostalgically rocked out to some of our Utada favorites.
I couldn’t take any pictures or video footage because cameras were strictly forbidden at the concert, but my friend Vince found this clip that had been taken at the concert last night and sent it to me. It’s of First Love. (Thanks Vince!)
There are some more videos online (although not of the San Francisco performance) that showcase more clips from the rest of her set list. I think they’re from her concert at the House of Blues in LA on the 19th.
From here, Utada will go on to perform in Las Vegas, Chicago, Boston, and then to her hometown here in the States, New York City. I hope that the rest of her tour is a success and hope that she can continue to break into the US music industry — I’m excited to see what the future has in store for her. I’m happy that I finally got to see her live, and hearing her sing took me back to the starry-eyed high schooler I was ten years ago. I feel like digging up that dusty First Love album from my closet and once again putting it on repeat.