Hikaru Utada performs “Mine or Yours” on The First Take in “Automatic” yellow

A screenshot of Hikaru Utada on The First Take — stood in front of a mic, wearing a yellow cardigan and light-blue denim jeans.

The First Take has really taken off over the years. We’ve seen popular British acts, such as Harry Styles appear on it. Avril Lavigne has made an appearance. Even Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu has pulled up to this bitch. But even so, it was surprising to see Hikaru Utada on it. Although, no more surprising than Hikaru appearing on the cover of WIRED magazine and visiting CERN. Shout-outs to Hikaru’s press and publicity team. They stay keeping us on our toes.

The First Take is a bit of a funny thing. Much like Colors, you cannot take these performances as live performances the same way you can a Tiny Desk, because they really aren’t. Even just the name ‘The First Take’ at this point is just a brand name. There is no way that every single performance on their channel is indeed the first take. YouTube channel Wings of Pegasus did a really cool video on The First Take — breaking down how he highly suspects that performance vocals are being post-produced and that the manifesto on The First Take channel is now untrue.

Even prior to coming across the Wings of Pegasus video, I knew the vocals from the performances were being cleaned up and tweaked, because the vocals never truly sound live or like they were from just one take. They sound WAY too clean and spruced up to a point they sound like studio recordings. Even with Hikaru’s performance of “Mine or Yours”, I was asking myself ‘Is this just a lip sync to the song streaming on Spotify!?’, because Hikaru’s vocals sounded SO similar to the studio recording. And it’s because the vocals were mixed so clean that they sounded like a studio recording, because it…kinda is a studio recording. So I really do not judge nor grade videos on The First Take based on how good a live performance is given, because I know it’s not really live in the traditional sense.

HENNYWAY.

It was lovely to see Hikaru Utada pull up in “Automatic” yellow and give a performance of “Mine or Yours” so soon. It’s a nice thing to have drop on the same day as the release of the song in place of a music video. Hikaru’s team continues to do a great job with their promo — adapting it to the current landscape of music in an age of streaming, YouTube, social media and the consideration of Hikaru’s non-Japanese fans.