Tracklist

1. HEART STATION
2. Stay Gold
3. HEART STATION (Karaoke)
4. Stay Gold (Karaoke)

This is Utada Hikarus’ 20^th Japanese single and was released on February 20, 2008. It reached #3 on the Oricon Charts and has sold 76,138 copies. Stay Gold is the 2007 ASIENCE commercial song while Heart Station is the 2008 Recochoku Download service commercial song.

Heart Station is probably the strongest single that Utada released for her album of the same name. It’s kind of hard to explain why though. The song starts off with an upbeat ethereal instrumental that makes me think of This Is Love and Keep Trying until things take a simpler route with Utada singing. What was surprising about this song that it had such a simple arrangement. That the song almost felt like it could have been sung in acapella (but I liked the little interludes in the song so I’d rather not like it like that). Other than though, I thought the lyrics were the best part. I enjoyed the concept of how even when two lovers have no contact with each other, they still are connected by their hearts, which explains the title, Heart Station. They were just so creative and strangely catchy too (I’ve learned the lyrics to this song without even having to look up romanji!) The only problem I had with this song is that it could have been more creative with the music since the song talks about “frequencies of heart” (radio signals or something?) and that Utadas vocals were strangely strained a lot in this song.

The second A-side is another favorite of mine. Stay Gold has a very dominant piano arrangement along with other sounds and R&B beats that make the song very mystical. There were even these “radio signal” sounds that I though Heart Station should have had. Utada’s vocals here are breathier than they normally are, but work very well with the mystical feel of the song. I also enjoyed the “waterfall” effect the piano had after the end of each chorus and the “My darling” part in the end. However, this song did get a bit repetitive and boring after a while.

On a side note, this was the first song I heard for this single. I remember playing the minute and a half demo version of it over and over because of how amazing it was.

Overall Rating:

5 out of 5