Album Review: Crystal Kay - All Time Best 25th Anniversary

When Crystal Kay announced that she was releasing a best album, I muttered ‘Bitch, finally’. I had no real expectations of it because…it’s a best album. You know what you’re getting more or less. And you would have to work hard to fuck up a best album.

[Sighs deeply]

When the tracklist for Crystal’s All Time Best 25th Anniversary was announced, I had a couple of quibbles — which will always be the case amongst fans when it comes to a best album tracklist, because you can’t please everybody. But on the whole, I thought the tracklist was fine and I was pleasantly surprised to see we were getting re-recordings of songs. But now that this best album is out, having heard these re-recordings and really sat with this album, I’ve gotta say — somehow Crystal’s team fucked up a best album.

It’s unfortunate to say that Crystal Kay hasn’t released a great deal of music in the 15 years since she left Sony for Universal, but this makes for an easier job when it comes to selecting songs for a Best album — just pick the singles and career highlights. And yet, we didn’t even fully get this.

For the most part, the selection of songs on this Best album make a lot of sense. But some choices make absolutely no sense at all, and these instances are what really stand out and make you ask the question ‘Why?’. And it’s from here that the cracks in this best album start to show, the cracks become chasms, and then before you know it you’re in World 1-2 of Super Mario Bros..

Not including “Candy” is crazy to me, as many of Crystal’s international fans were introduced to her through this song. And then there is “Can’t Be Stopped”, “Girl U Love” and “Teenage Universe ~ Chewing Gum Baby” — all singles which were omitted from this album. Meanwhile, the likes of “Tsuki no Nai Yoru, Michi no Nai Basho” and “Let’s Suika Dorobo” made the cut. And why the hell is “Play That” on this album over one of Crystal’s own songs? And why is the MSG Version of “Hard to Say” on here over the original version that more fans know and are familiar with? I already know why. But we’ll get to that.

And of course, we have to talk about the omission of all omissions — “Kirakuni”. I do not know the ins and outs of why this song was in litigation limbo for 6 years, but it’s a mess. Crystal’s team did not do their due diligence in a timely enough fashion for my liking. And “Kirakuni” finally being made available on streaming globally little over a month after the release of All Time Best was also a mess. Because if people in CK’s team and Universal were actually communicating, they could have aligned the release of All Time Best with when “Kirakuni” was available, so they could release the album with it on there.

Crystal Kay - All Time Best 25th Anniversary | Universal Music

All Time Best should not have been released without “Kirakuni” on it and I am dead serious about this. I’m not even a huge fan of the song myself. But it is such a significant song in Crystal Kay’s discography. “Kirakuni” was an introduction to Crystal for many of her non-Japanese fans in America and Europe, where it’s probably her most popular and most well known song. It is also a notable song which marked a visual shift in Crystal’s image and sound, especially after “Koi ni Ochitara”. “Kirakuni” was also a career milestone for Crystal, who got to work with Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis — the team behind the music of the woman Crystal idolises — Janet Jackson.

For the past 6 years Crystal’s fans have continually hit her up about “Kirakuni” ever since many of us realised that it wasn’t on streaming globally. So there is no way Crystal wasn’t going back to her team like ‘Y’all. Where is this song?’. And still, this Best album was released without it. Not even a re-recording of it. To release a best album without “Kirakuni” just feels egregious. It also further shows how out of touch Crystal’s team and Universal are with her legacy and how completely unaware they are of any aspect of Crystal’s career and fanbase outside of Japan. To leave off a song off of a Best album which is popular amongst non-Japanese fans, when you know Crystal is going on a North American tour, just for it to be made 6 weeks after the album releases!?

Girl, fire the whole marketing and management team.

I know I have spoken a lot about Crystal’s non-Japanese fans outside of Japan and these aren’t the priority for Japanese acts. But it has been clear for quite some time now that Crystal Kay has lost what little foothold she had in the Japanese market. And between Japanese music gaining more and more global attention, Crystal having always been an act primed for global appeal and Crystal Kay’s realisation that she can embark on a successful tour in North America despite having not toured Japan in YEARS — it’s clear that an approach for this Best album should have been to target each of these things. And yet, it album failed to target any of these things. The low hanging fruit was left right there to whiter on the vine. It would not have taken much to have made All Time Best 25th Anniversary a great package which did all of the things it needed to, and this is what makes the end result so frustrating. I just fail to see who exactly this album is supposed to be for. Because it’s certainly not for us fans.

Crystal Kay - All Time Best 25th Anniversary | Universal Music

All Time Best 25th Anniversary features re-recordings of “Tsuki no Nai Yoru Michi no Nai Basho”, “Boyfriend - Part II”, “Koi ni Ochitara” and “One”. And, the approach toward these once again makes me wonder who on earth this best album is for. These re-recordings are Dusty Garden Galaxy.

Crystal sounds good pm these re-recordings. Crystal always sounds good. It would take A LOT for her to not sound good. But the approach with these covers is what makes them dusty. Trying to do a 1:1 cover of a song is always risky business. Because no matter how meticulous you are about trying to match the original recording, something is always going to be different. It might be a technical thing. The microphone quality is different. The acoustics in the studio are different. The mix is different. But even if you nail the technical shit, there’s a big ol’ part of the original recording that you will never be able to replicate — the heart of it. The heart is the magic of the original recording that you cannot replicate, no matter how hard you try — especially on songs where it’s the youthfulness of the artists that contributed to it. We saw the same thing happen when JoJo re-recorded her first two albums and when Taylor Swift re-recorded some of her albums — both doing so over a decade since they originally recorded them. The originals were better in most cases. But with JoJo and Taylor Swift, re-recording their songs and trying to match the originals was rooted in business. The aim was to replace the originals. But with Crystal, going this route for her re-recordings was misguided. Crystal re-recording her songs should have been a creative choice, not a business one.

My theory is that Universal chose a couple of Crystal’s most popular songs that they saw were getting a good number of streams, and wanted re-recordings of them to sound as similar as possible to the originals so that they could get some of those streams of those songs, instead of them all going to Sony. The problem here though, is that there is zero incentive for any CK fan to stream the re-recordings, when the originals are far superior and still available to stream. And Crystal’s current situation is not the same as JoJo’s and Taylor’s was — where rights were at play and there was a benefit to both artists if fans streamed the re-recordings.

Crystal has performed “Boyfriend - Part II” and “Koi ni Ochitara” numerous times in recent years, and sings them very differently to how she originally did. If re-recording these songs was a creative choice, Crystal would’ve sung them as she has done live for the past decade and not how she did 20 years ago — which is why I think the approach with the re-recordings was purely a business choice from the label. And it sucks. Because we were robbed of having re-imaginings / flips of “Tsuki no Nai Yoru Michi no Nai Basho”, “Boyfriend - Part II”, “Koi ni Ochitara” and “One” which were built around the artist Crystal Kay is now.

Crystal Kay’s voice is SO much better now than it was when she recorded each of these songs. But you don’t get any sense of that, because Crystal isn’t able to sing these songs in a way which shows the growth in her voice. And in each case, Crystal doesn’t sound as good as she does on the originals as a result. Crystal doesn’t sound bad on any of them. It’s just that the aforementioned youthfulness of the original recordings — you can’t mimic that. And the way Crystal sang those songs back then worked for her voice back then. This is why the re-recordings should have been approached in a way that had Crystal singing them in a way that works for her voice and how she sings now. A studio recording of “Koi ni Ochitara” sounding like this is what we needed. Not the cookie-cutter version we got.

Approaching the re-recordings as re-imaginings would have given fans a reason to stream them and possibly opt for them over the originals. But instead we ended up with re-recordings which were just a waste of Crystal’s time, the engineer’s time, the mixer’s time, the producers’ time, our time.

Props to Crystal for still being able to sing these old-ass songs in their original key though.

Crystal Kay - All Time Best 25th Anniversary | Universal Music

All Time Best 25th anniversary includes 1 brand new song, “Best Version of Me”. It’s a really beautiful song which is about Crystal wanting to strive, grow and become the best version of herself that she can be. As a fan it’s kinda heartbreaking to hear her sing this song, knowing that her career isn’t where it should be, and that the better person that she is becoming isn’t completely aligning with her career. I know her career isn’t specifically what the song is about. But I think to some degree it does still apply, because being a singer is a huge part of who Crystal is as a person. It’s clear every single time she performs live that she lives and breathes music. So it really does suck that Universal seem to be holding her back from being the best version of Crystal Kay the superstar that she should be — preventing the world from seeing her the way that many of us fans have always seen her. It’s a shame that “Best Version of Me” wasn’t a single. Although given the chart performance of Crystal’s music releases these days, it wouldn’t have done anything commercially anyway.

This best release really did need another 2 new songs though. Preferably one produced by DJ Taku which featured Verbal and another written by Michico and produced by T. Kura — to help create a full circle moment and callback to some of Crystal’s most prominent collaborators over the course of her 25 year career. Bringing M-Flo and the Giant Swing posse back into the fold would have also helped Crystal determine where her sound should go. Or given her the shake by the shoulders she desperately needs, in order to realise that her current sound is not working, that she needs to pivot and that Universal is sabotaging a bitch.

Crystal Kay - All Time Best 25th Anniversary | Universal Music

All Time Best is not a true celebration of Crystal Kay’s career and this is the biggest problem with it. The release feels like an obligation or a case of Universal just putting something out because they’re stuck on how to make any new material from Crystal chart. And so many of the decisions made with this album contradict things Crystal wants to do with her career and her music, which further leads me to believe that some of Crystal’s team and Universal do not give a fuck about her career.

Crystal Kay said that she would love to perform more overseas. And yet the version of All Time Best 25th Anniversary which first hit streaming platforms outside of Japan only featured 17 songs — all of which were the re-recordings and the Universal releases. If Universal were really about trying to get Crystal maximum exposure, then they would have released the complete version of All Time Best on streaming worldwide from day one. But they didn’t. Even as I post this, the complete version of the album still isn’t the version which is accessible on Crystal’s artist page on streaming platforms outside of Japan. It’s not even searchable. This whole ‘Push the Universal releases on this album’ bullshit is all so counter-intuitive. Because whilst “Superman”, “Forever” and “Delicious na Kinyoubi” are great songs, fans will just stream them from Vivid. And because this best album hit streaming without any of the original Sony releases that fans know and love, they were just pushed to stream them from her Sony albums, including her 2009 best album, which is a better best album than this shit Universal threw together anyway. And Random J Pop followers already had a CK25 playlist back in 2024 which had all of these songs and already had “Kirakuni” in it, ready for when it was made available. And streaming platforms also have artist playlists which are career retrospective.

It’s clear that Universal is trying to prioritise Crystal’s Universal discography over her Sony one, which I fully understand from a business perspective. However, there are two problems with this.

Crystal’s Universal discography doesn’t hold a candle to her Sony one. And not a single song she has released on Universal has managed to stick and become a classic in the same way many of her Sony singles had. Not even Crystal’s song with Namie Amuro was enough to move the needle. So now, here we are. Universal releases, flopping.

Whether Universal likes it or not, Crystal’s Sony catalog is the bread and butter of her career. They can try to sideline it, section it off and act like it doesn’t matter — but it does. And they clearly know it does, which is why they had her re-record “Koi ni Ochitara” and shoot a video for it, so they could have a version of her most popular song released under them. And if this really mattered that much to Universal and was such a sticking point for them, then they shoulda just had Crystal pull a Finally and re-record every song. It wouldn’t have meant a damn thing though, because fans woulda just said ‘Nah’ and played the OG Sony shit anyway. Especially if the quality of all of the re-recordings were as dusty as the ones we got for this best album.

No matter which way you cut it, this best album is a mess which disregards so many different facets of Crystal as an artist. There was no reason for this best album to end up like this. Especially after Hikaru Utada’s Science Fiction. Science Fiction set a clear blueprint on how to approach a best album in this day and age of streaming, which goes beyond just a compilation of the singles. Science Fiction featured re-mastered songs with different mixes, re-recorded versions of classics and several new songs. There was no real favouring of any particular album or era of Hikaru Utada’s career, which was cool. And the even cooler thing about Science Fiction is that it felt like a very future facing thing. It wasn’t just a retrospective, but also a look forward. Then there is Crystal Kay’s All Time Best 25th Anniversary — where Universal chose to live in delusion that they could release a best album which prioritised the Universal releases, all the while promoting it with a re-recording of a song from Crystal’s Sony catalog, a catalog which is still driving Crystal’s career.

Somebody please make it make some sort of sense.

Science Fiction specifically should have been a Best release that Crystal’s team looked at, because Hikaru Utada is in the same situation as Crystal — having to acknowledge their non-Japanese fans outside of Japan and their core Japanese fans, and also having their discography split between Sony and Universal. The blueprint was right there.

It’s beyond laziness and ineptitude at this point. Select members of Crystal’s team, LDH and Universal do not give a fuck about Crystal. And I don’t know how many more signs that Crystal needs to shake things up and tell some people that they need to seek new employment.

Crystal Kay - All Time Best 25th Anniversary | Universal Music

All Time Best 25th Anniversary is not good. The only value it has, is that the physical limited edition comes with a DVD / Blu-ray of Crystal’s 25th anniversary show. But I even feel a type of way about this, because her 25th anniversary show really shoulda been a separate DVD / Blu-ray release and hit streaming. Because once those limited edition albums go out of print, that is IT. And that’s another Crystal Kay concert lost to time, because nobody in her team cares about preservation. We still don’t have her music videos uploaded to an official YouTube channel. If it wasn’t the Sony Music, Liverary YouTube and Crystal Kay HD fan account, we wouldn’t have shit. But that’s a whole other post.

This album is not the celebration of Crystal’s career that it should have been. The fact that All Time Best 25th Anniversary released halfway through 2025 and not in 2024 — the actual year of Crystal Kay’s 25th Anniversary — is ridiculous in and of itself.

How this best album turned out continues to show that Universal is not serious about Crystal’s career or her legacy. Crystal Kay deserved SO much better than this.

To everybody involved in putting this best album together and ensuring it could be the dustiest best album it could possibly be — y’all should be ashamed of yourselves.

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