Coverage of Utada’s “WILD LIFE”
When I said I had a feeling that Utada Hikaru‘s WILD LIFE tour was going to be fantastic, I wasn’t wrong ♥
Me and a few friends on Twitter, (namely our talented group of media critics Selryam, Donovon, FUTURESTARdelux and cucupan), woke up early/stayed up late to watch the irreplaceable goddess of Japanese music live for her farewell concert, and I was completely unprepared to how amazing the setlist of the concert was going to be as well as how much nostalgia it would be evoking! It was certainly one of Utada’s most amazing, heartfelt performances, ever!
The show opened with an intro video starring Kuma-chang in a Kuma-shaped spaceship that crashes onto Earth. Utada then comes down from a metal structure located on the ceiling and opens the show with Goodbye Happiness, which medleys into traveling towards the end of the song. She’s surrounded by a small orchestra at the center of the stage, and this part of the concert is very upbeat, with some songs she never sang live before! The setlist for this part of the concert is as follows:
Opening
Goodbye Hapiness
traveling
テイク 5
Prisoner Of Love
COLORS
Letters
Hymne a l’amour ～愛のアンセム～
SAKURAドロップス
Eclipse (Interlude)
This part of the concert brought about a lot of nostalgia, with songs like traveling, Letters and COLORS, as well as Prisoner Of Love and yet, had an air of freshness with テイク 5, a fan favorite that was never sang live before! Utada kept the magical feel of this part of the show with her phantasmagorical outfit reminiscent of UTADA UNITED 2006‘s cotton candy outfit:
After Utada’s piano rendition of SAKURAドロップス, she’s brought down through the platform at the center of the stage for an outfit change, and comes back with a slightly more casual outfit for the bigger part of the tour:
This was my absolute favorite part because for the first time ever, she sang my favorite song on the ULTRA BLUE album (and also one of my top favorite Utada Hikaru songs of all time), BLUE! This sequence of songs was beyond epic:
Passion
BLUE
Show Me Love (Not A Dream)
Stay Gold
ぼくはくま
Automatic
First Love
Flavor Of Life
Beautiful World
光
虹色バス
This has some of my favorite Hikki songs, and I love it how she didn’t stick solely to classics, and picked more of her more meaningful songs as well as fan favorites to compose the setlist! I was kind of getting tired of Can You Keep A Secret? and Wait & See ～リスク～ on every tour of hers, so I think this tour was fantastic when it came to song choice. Hikki’s voice, however, was pretty strained sometimes, and I think she should’ve warmed up a little bit before she went on stage. Some songs were kind of hard to listen to.
The arrangements were amazing, though! Stay Gold took my breath away and Hikki just went for it with Beautiful World! At the end she played around with her vocals a lot, just throwing herself out there in a very cute, exciting manner that got me even more excited about the performance! This was truly something special! On 虹色バス, Hikki even got emotional with the applause of her fans, and I could see her eyes sparking in a way that looked teary, and it was just a beautiful moment, where she was asking for more and more applause (possibly for the encore), and got so sentimental! She looked beautiful!
I loved how she kept putting her hand on her chest ♥ It was so heart-warming!
She went out for a brief outfit change after this set and came back with a guitar and very casual clothing:
Here Hikki surprised us with a homage to John Lennon with the song Across The Universe while she played guitar. Unfortunately, this was the only English song she played, but the encore was fantastic because it brought about such a personal feeling! The setlist was as follows:
Across the Universe
Can’t Wait ‘Til Christmas
time will tell
I loved it to death! The ending with time will tell was so beautiful! I love this song and I’m sure it holds a lot of meaning to Hikki because it was on her debut single and is just one of the songs that’s kept as a classic but not in an overrated, overplayed manner, so it was such a pleasant surprise!
The setlist for WILD LIFE was nothing wild, rather very heartfelt, beautiful, unique, and nothing like I expected! When she started to sing BLUE, my heart melted like nothing else! I can’t wait to have this on DVD, because it was truly something beyond my imagination and so special! It wasn’t as full of special effects as UTADA UNITED 2006, but it was definitely of huge production! Musically fantastic and full of feeling, it’s just the type of farewell tour I’d expect from Hikki! As personal as a mega production can get!
To everyone who purchased a copy of Utada Hikaru SINGLE COLLECTION VOL.2, you’ll be able to watch the concert again as many times as you want in the following website sometime soon!
Everything was worth it! Even rookie J-Pop sensation JASMINE was watching and enjoying the concert from her house, tweeting about it!
We’re all going to miss you so much, Hikki! ♡ Enjoy your hiatus and please don’t forget about us! We’ll be patiently waiting for you!
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[...] courtesy of Plastic Candy. Give them some love. :] Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)An Austrian Christmas. [...]
I’m from Canada.
Saw it on USTREAM and it was great to watch it despite waking up very early.
I loved when she sang Hikari and First Love!
http://wp.me/pQmiL-2SR (Short review on my Music blog)
Very complete report! ~ :D Thank you for linking “Plastic Candy” on it too! ^^~
It truly was great to watch despite waking up early :’) ~ It was so surreal being able to watch her live without having to fly to Japan ~
NP!
Just that I lost track on J-Pop in quite some time.
Except for Hikki, she is different LOL :P
I’ve gotten into the whole Canadian indie alternative rock scene.
Hence my site http://photogmusic.com
I wasn’t able to watch it yesterday I had an exam to study for :(. I’m going to watch it today though. Also, the semester is over and now I can start bothering you again WOOT :p!
Yayy! ~ :D I love to be bothered by you! XD HAHAHAHA I’m so glad you’ll be able to enjoy more of your free time! :D I hope you enjoy the concert ;D
Just a point about your text! The very first dress that Hikki used on the show wasn’t the cotton candy one! The cotton candy outfit was gray and black and was circular shaped :)
The costume she wore was pink and kinda unraved
Yeah :D I meant it reminded me of her “UTADA UNITED 2006″ dress :P Just a little reminiscent ~ I’m sorry if I phrased it in a weird manner ~ X3
But thank you so much for your interest! ^^~ If I get anything wrong please let me know! :D I’ll be more than glad to correct it ^^
This is a really nice post about the whole event. I never managed to see Utada perform in person, but this was the next best thing.
Would you mind if I used some of your screencaps in a post of my own. I didn’t have the foresight to be running Hypercam all night. ^_^;
Of course! :D Feel free to use my screencaps ^^~ Just credit me please :P
I’m glad you liked the post! :D I tried writing it right after the concert for people who weren’t able to watch it yet and wanted to see a little bit of it before the downloaded it X3 It truly was the next best thing :P
Thanks, of course I’ll credit you. ^_^
It’ll be part of our 12 Days of Christmas series. It’ll go up on the 20th.
@Rakuen Oh ~ That sounds awesome! :D I’ll be checking it out for sure! ^^~ Thank you for letting me know ♥
Augh! I’ve been so out of the loop lately that I didn’t even know this was happening X’O
Love the new layout, btw :3
OMG, our little Hikki’s leaving us for an undetermined amount of time, can you believe it?! ;-; But don’t worry ~ Soon it’ll be coming out on DVD and all :3 And it’ll probably be the unseen-live-date because apparently she performed so much better vocally and was a lot more emotional ~
Thank you so much! ^^~ My baby made it for me :P I thought it was very appropriate because it looks very holiday season and beautiful! :D