Hikaru Utada to feature on Charlie Puth’s fourth studio album, Whatever’s Clever!

Charlie Puth revealed the tracklist for his third studio album Whatever’s Clever! and it boasts a bunch of features — Kenny G, Ravyn Lenae, Hikaru Utada, Coco Jones, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins and Jeff Goldblum. All of whom are really unexpected, but a bunch of whom also make sense. Based on the songs released from the album so far, Whatever’s Clever! is gonna be an ode to the sounds of the 80s. So, a song with a Kenny G sax solo? Check. A song with The Doobie Brothers’ member Michael McDonald? Check. And a song with Kenny Loggins — the writer, producer and singer of the song “Footloose”? Check. And Charlie Puth likes him a Black woman with a good voice. So, Coco Jones? Check. And then somehow there’s Hikaru Utada in the mix. A wild card alongside Ravyn Lenae.

Yep. Hikaru Utada will feature on the seventh track of Charlie Puth’s Whatever’s Clever — titled “Home”. And I really do hope that this is a legit feature and not that Cardi B featuring Janet Jackson mess, where the feature was not a feature at all, but just a sample of a Janet Jackson song.

Hikaru Utada featuring on a Charlie Puth album doesn’t feel as random to me as it probably should. I mean, we’re talking about an artist who has featured on a song with Foxy Brown, featured on a re-release of a Sam Smith song, and has worked with Skrillex, Floating Points and the same gangly white man who produced Charli XCX’s Brat.

But I can see the vision for Hikaru and Charlie on a song together. They’re both music nerds. They both started their careers young. They both write and produce their own material. And it’s not hard to imagine that Charlie Puth would know of Hikaru Utada and actually listen to their music. I bet he fucks with “First Love” and “Mine or Yours”.

It’s been quite the couple of weeks for Charlie Puth, as a result of delivering one of the standout performances at the MusiCares event honouring Mariah Carey and really cool rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl, and now he’s about to be all over Japanese music sites and blogs because his album features Hikaru Utada.

Charlie Puth’s fourth studio album Whatever’s Clever! Releases on March 27. I was looking forward to this album based purely on the lead single “Changes”, which I thought was great. But now with Hikaru Utada in the mix? Come March 27 I’ll be ‘seated’ as the kids say.

Hikaru seems to be all about collaborations as of late, huh…