The Lyrical Wizardry Behind Hikaru Utada’s Revival Hit ‘First Love’

In recent years, you’ve doubtlessly felt some major shifts in the Western pop music scene. Of course, there has been the rise of reggaeton, fresh takes on pop-punk, edgy new grooves from London, and hit trends that originated on TikTok. While these are all fascinating movements, there’s another in the air — the meteoric rise of Asian artists.

Since the late 2010s, listeners around the world have been reappraising music from Asia, and the development of streaming platforms has provided Asian music with an even greater presence. Special note should be taken of the presence of musician Hikaru Utada, who uses they/them pronouns and has drawn a great deal of interest for their rich catalog of songs, including “Somewhere Near Marseilles,” a club-like tune that deftly evokes the precarious emotional states people have been thrust into by the pandemic. In 2022, they released their latest album, BAD MODE, to the acclaim of music lovers everywhere.

Hikaru Utada is now known for their intriguing style, drawing the listener into a maze of fine, spiraling rhythms, working with producers such as Floating Points, A. G. Cook and Nariaki Obukuro on their new album. It’s important to remember, however, that long before they released songs like “Face My Fears” and “Simple and Clean,” which became well-known in the West due to their use in the Kingdom Hearts games, they had already created universally loved hits.

One of those was “First Love,” the topic of this column. “First Love” has become a hit song in many countries throughout Asia, taking the No. 1 and No. 2 spots on the Apple Music Daily Top 100 and Spotify Daily Rankings Hong Kong and Taiwan. It’s also rising rapidly through the charts in Korea and Indonesia, enjoying a passionate revival not only in Japan but across national borders. This rediscovery was sparked by the November release of the Netflix series First Love. The Netflix series was inspired by the interaction generated from the Hikaru Utada songs “First Love” and “Hatsukoi” and their maddening sense of heartache. The show has become a hit throughout Asia.

“First Love” was revealed to most of the world from the main stage at the Coachella Festival in 2022, but it first captivated Japanese listeners back in 1999. Even though Hikaru Utada was just 16 years old at the time, the song has been a continuing inspiration throughout the years. In that way, as well, the fate of the song resonates with the series First Love, whose story winds back and forth through the past and the present.

What has influenced the path of “First Love”? As is clear from the fact that the song has become a hit again throughout Asia, 23 years after its initial release, it’s clear that “First Love” possesses a certain kind of universality. 

Its structure is extremely simple — just piano, bass, drums, and acoustic guitar. This format brings out Utada’s vocals to their fullest. Their vocal performance, which demonstrated a highly refined expressive sensibility despite the song being one of their debut-era releases, can be enjoyed to its fullest on “First Love (A Cappella Mix),” included on the exclusive limited-edition 7-inch single. Their vocals, like a tightrope walker that sways with the music but never falls, are nothing less than breathtaking.

Special attention should be paid to their use of breath. Throughout the song, they use an unusual breath approach, but only for the verse. The floating opening of the song begins, “Saigo no kiss wa, tobacco no flavor ga shita, nigakute setsunai kaori” (“Our last kiss was the flavor of cigarettes, A bitter taste”). They take a breath between “sa” and “igo,” and then again before “kiss,” expressing the fluttering, flustered feelings of love. However, although they pause midway through the word “tobacco,” they don’t take a breath. There’s a momentary silence, one in which even their breathing is stopped, deftly expressing time coming to a halt during a kiss. In the second verse, “Tachidomaru jikan ga ugokidaso to shiteru, wasurerarenai koto bakari” (“Time, standing still, is about to start moving, So many things I don’t want to forget”), the lyrics are accompanied by surprising, bold breath usage. Time, which was stopped for a moment by a kiss, starts up again, along with their breath. Utada uses an “a-i-o” rhyme pattern in both verses (“saigo” and “tachido”), but there’s a crucial difference between them. This deliberate use of breath is also reflected in the newly released Dolby Atmos version, “First Love (2022 Mix).”

A lot has been said about how “First Love” demonstrates unique vocal timing, with pauses where they would not normally be found in Japanese, along with novel uses of breath as an instrument. However, what’s truly notable, more than the methods themselves, are the way that Utada interwove their use of breath with the lyrics to create a sensation of time coming to a standstill during a kiss tinged with a hint of the smell of a cigarette, or the sadness that comes with time starting again when you realize that love has ended. It is because these feelings are shared by people throughout time, we have — unforgettable experiences that are hard to put into words. “First Love” uses breath to breathe new life into emotions that have had an indelible impact on us but have dissipated with time. This is bound to become a universal, or perhaps invariable, artistic technique that will become part of the common language of music, transcending time and borders.

—This article by Tsuya-chan first appeared on Billboard Japan