I bought the new Hikaru Utada album from Amazon last week. The CD was only $8, quite a switch from what her albums cost in Japan, which is around 3000 yen ($30). Even though I was disappointed by her last album in English, Exodus, the follow-ups on the Japanese side, Ultra Blue and Heart Station, were so good that I had to give "This Is The One" a try. That I'd heard the single Apple & Cinnamon on blip.fm was also a factor, because as it turns out, that's one of the better tracks on the disc.

The lead single from the album, Come Back To Me, isn't all that great. The song is about this chick who cheated on her guy and now wants him back, which, having been in that situation, I'm biased against from the get-go. Furthermore, she switches from first-person perspective to third-person, which I find quite irritating. Throw in endless repetition of the chorus and I'm hitting the skip track button.

FYI was fairly offenseless, although the sexual innuendo—"I'm gonna be yours tonight ... FYI we're gonna be up all night"—is endemic to the album. The alternate title to the track, "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence", is due to the sample from the film's soundtrack (unfortunately I haven't seen it).

Apple and Cinnamon is a standout track. The chorus is very catchy (I'd say 'infectious' but I detest that word in reviews) and the lyrics are plausible: "Started out so simple and innocent / Chemistry like apple and cinnamon"—I suppose if it were "apples and cinnamon" I'd be thinking Quaker's oatmeal. Still, this track also has a very short lyric base, and ends up repeating itself too many times. (I noticed that recent John Mayer songs also have this problem.)

Me Muero, Taking My Money Back, Automatic Part II, and Poppin' were pretty much forgettable songs. The title of the album comes up in the song This One (Crying Like a Child): "This is the one / Come on and give it up"—bearable, not laudable. Now, I liked Dirty Desire because of the lyrics: "And in my fantasies 'I love you long time'"—yeah, she said it! Pretty funny, in a cheap sort of way. Then she follows up with: "Doing my nine to five / I'm thinking six and nine" which is, again, funny but cheap. Still, I can dig it—like Sotomayor, I have empathy, ha ha (but unlike Sotomayor, I'm no racist). On and On is ok, a Destiny's Child-esque chick-power song.

Another standout track is Sanctuary, which isn't present on the MP3 version, only on the CD. Sanctuary is the English redo of Passion from the Japanese album Ultra Blue. Passion, and thus Sanctuary, has this really cool sound, urgent and dark, but the lyrics are substantially different. Passion talks about a failed relationship and the aftermath. (The bit about the guy she once was with having a kid and her wondering about if he'll send a picture with the New Year's card is pretty depressing. I wonder if that's not more than a bit of a personal prediction for her since her divorce.) With Sanctuary it's kind of hard to tell; the lyrics sound like that after a lot of turbulence she's found a guy who's stable, yet is faced with dealing with the emotional baggage she's now got. There are words in the song that are reversed, which adds to the mystique. Go play the track backward!

Overall, the album is well-polished. I don't see it as taking off in the U.S., however. It should do better than Exodus, because it is a better record. My concern is that Utada seems wont to fit into the R&B-flavored pop scene in the U.S. rather than carve out her own niche. Mainstream is rather fickle, and the stars who are the flavors of the moment, as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera were, didn't write the songs that made them famous. To make it big in the U.S., it seems that one has to cede control to the publisher, who will make something sugary, a total package that sells. Certainly, Utada is pretty (and lost a lot of weight for the PR photos), but she's not a vamp like Spears or Aguilera. My impression is that she doesn't have that streetwise instinct, and that she's trying to retrofit herself into that mold. Predictably, a dissonance results. While she is blazing the trail for Japanese singers who want to cross over just by being out there, like a female executive prodding the glass ceiling, the uniqueness of her music for the Japanese market seems diluted by tailoring it for American audiences, or should I say, what she perceives as what American audiences want to hear. Although I'm no expert on the American mass consciousness, I think the bittersweet taste of Apple and Cinnamon could work. Certainly I like the unique soundscape from Sanctuary. Perhaps Utada would be better off in porting over her Japanese pop sound rather than bastardizing it into a cliche. Novelty is key to the American market. Since Utada can actually sing and arrange music, she possesses talents rare in a pop songstress. Utada has the capacity to far exceed previous Japanese girl-group groundbreakers in the U.S. market, Shonen Knife and Cibo Matto. My humble opinion is that she should let her talents stand on their own—she is a true artist, after all.