Special Edition: Crystal Kay - X | A fake album of Crystal Kay’s collaborations

Crystal Kay has done a whole bunch of collaborations over the years. It’s actually something I’d go as far to say that she’s known for. And something that she also kinda helped popularise within the J-pop / J-R&B space in a way, taking a page out of the Mariah Carey playbook. Once Crystal fully settled into being the J-R&B pop girl, she was putting rappers on songs left and right, the same way Mariah did once she snatched her ‘Me and my ni***s’ card back from Tommy Mottola.

Record labels and management companies in Japan live for Best releases, and yet Crystal has only released three of them in a 24 year / 13 album career, which is admirable in a market where Best releases are incredibly frequent. But it shocks me (but also doesn’t) that we’ve not gotten a Best album from Crystal Kay which features all of the collaborations she’s done over the years. Now, sure. It would be a bit of legal work to get all of them on one release, given that all of these collaborations were not on songs of hers on either of the labels she was signed to, and that they all span different acts with different agencies on different labels. But it’s not impossible. Well... Perhaps with a team like Crystal’s it is. ‘Cos they still haven’t managed to get “Kirakuni” on streaming.

Girl. Fire the whole management and marketing team.

Best albums are such an easy way to create stop gaps whilst an artist and a record label gets their shit together for a studio album. And if played right, a Best album can be a huge thing in its own right, with it’s own set of singles and a tour to go along with it. Namie’s Checkmate and Perfume’s P3 are looking at Crystal like ‘Get it together!’.

But I think big part of what Crystal’s team should be doing right now is reminding everybody of all that she’s done, and how wide the net is that she and her music have cast over the past couple of decades. And a Best album of collaborations is one easy way to do that. But if LDH, Sony and Universal won’t do it then-

For those of you who don’t have Spotify, I got’chu, as this playlist is also available on YouTube.

Because of certain songs and albums not being available I was unable to include certain songs in the Spotify playlist, such as “I Like It”, “Lost Child” and “Fantastic Journey”, amongst others. And due to discrepancies between what is available on which platform, there are also minor differences between the Spotify and YouTube versions of the playlist. the YouTube playlists are the most complete. But due to the nature of YouTube featuring unofficial uploads of songs, the YouTube playlists are the most complete. 

🔊 Stream X: 🟢 Spotify | 🔴 YouTube Music | 🔴 YouTube

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📀 CK Special Editions: Euphoria, a Crystal Kay dance album | Sparkle, a Crystal Kay Christmas album

🎧 CK Spotify playlists: This is Crystal Kay | Crystal Kay: Ballads