Hikaru Utada has long excelled at turning love, longing and loss into pop music that can soundtrack a listener's life.
Since debuting in 1998 at the age of 15, Utada has become among the most successful — artistically and commercially — J-pop artists of all time. They did so by taking complicated emotions and transforming them into songs that soar in the moment and can linger for years, to the point of defining the sound of the late 1990s. Their songs were built for everyone.
“Bad Mode,” Utada’s eighth full-length album (and their first since announcing in June that they are nonbinary, preferring they/them pronouns), finds the singer-songwriter practicing self-care. The grand declarations of first love and fresh heartbreaks from their earlier albums are replaced with introspection and attention to the mundane yet meaningful aspects of daily life. Utada sings about therapy sessions and nights spent at home, but these entries lead to deeper reflections on the transience of life, romantic unease and the struggle for self-acceptance.