Utada’s latest, entirely english album, (her third attempt in breaking into the western market) has finally been released in Japan, and will be released in the US in May. I managed to sample her album before buying it and i must say its a great improvement from her previous all-english album. Its much more mature and more contemporary and it really sets a new milestone in her career that she do have the potential to break new grounds in the western market. The downside for me its the lyrics composition. I dunno but i feel that it can be improved alot more. Though the songs are catchy, but it feel that it doesnt really connect with the listeners, when it comes to how she composes her songs lyrically, especially if she is trying to connect to the english audiences. The album manages to debut at no 3 on the Oricon charts on its first week of release, quite a dissapoint really given the fact this would be her first album (excluding the previous english album release) to NOT top the charts on the week of release. But then again, you can really blame the quality of the tracks, perhaps its more difficult to market an all-english album to the Japanese market. Perhaps they are waiting to see if it is really good to make their perchase. Also mind you that the charts only track physical album sales and not digital sales like from Itunes, which in the past have dominated the charts from within, from the recent singles that she has released so far.
So will she be able to dominate the airwaves in the States, only time will tell. But i feel that it would be an uphill task. Her biggest assets would be her roots, and maybe, just maybe a fresh face and voice would give her the break she needs.
Her new album features 10 all-new tracks including 2 remixes.
2.“Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence – FYI” (Samples Ryuichi Sakamoto song with the same name.)
3.”Apple and Cinnamon”
4.”Taking My Money Back”
5.”This One (Crying Like a Child)”
6.”Automatic Part II”
7.”Dirty Desire”
8.”Poppin'”
10.”Me Muero”
Click on the above links to sample the songs.
thecosmopolitanwanderer.blog 
This is her second attempt to break into a western market, not third attempt.
Her first English album “Precious”(She wrote all the songs at age 12, signed with Virgin record in 1996 but EMI America bought Virgin Record. As you know, Virgin is now part of EMI.) was not released in the US because of these record company complicated mergence (EMI America didn’t release Precious). In 1998, “Precious” was released only in Japan under the label “Toshiba EMI Japan”.
She wrote this record company complication in her lyric in “Automatic part 2” with her good sense of humor.
“Used to be a Virgin (record company), Now I’m with Island Def Jam”.
well this is also the great outbreak of utada addiction to be out in the world of j-pop and i hope it will be the next panorama to be unleash in the world many addict fan will be surely get the copy of the album
atagenesu this is the next frontier of breaking the western music in the competition of who will be the next star in motion and the biggest thing is the normal way of singing it and delivering the music it makes us go wild
i hope the western music will not be offended to the fact she is hte allusive singer to be welcome and to be cared of
ohhnice post but truly?/? 😛