Hikaru Utada releases a second music video for “Pappa Paradise” featuring famed Japanese rocker, Hiroto Kōmoto

Not me forgetting to post about the second “Pappa Paradise” video featuring Hiroto Kōmoto.

This video was equally as cool as the original video. Fun and playful. Hiroto is like a damn cartoon character with how he looks and moves.

Hiroto Kōmoto initially seemed like such an odd choice to feature on “Pappa Paradise”. But the moment he starts singing, it all kinda makes sense. To me, he fits the song to a point where “Pappa Paradise” feels like it was always intended to include him on it. This version of the song is the canon version of the song for me.

Hiroto Kōmoto has a long history in music, dating back to 1985. Since then he’s been the front-man for three rock bands — The Blue Hearts, The High-Lows and The Cro-Magnons. He is a well known and revered figure in Japanese rock, which is one thing that makes his collaboration with Hikaru Utada such a big deal. The other being that it just seems so out of the blue. Hikaru Utada and Reena Shingo doing something together made sense and felt like a long time coming. Hikaru Utada and Hiroto Kohmoto!? It feels so left-field. I cannot help but wonder how on Earth this came about. But during Hikaru and Hiroto’s sit down where they interviewed one another, it became clearer and clearer that Hikaru and Hiroto have A LOT in common and share a lot of the same outlooks on life and approaches to making music. And you realise that not only do the two of them working together make sense, but the message of “Pappa Paradise” is one which aligns with Hiroto’s approaches to life. So the whole thing just works and makes the union of Hikaru and Hiroto feel almost serendipitous.

Hikaru Utada featuring Hiroto Kōmoto - Pappa Paradise | Sony Music Labels Inc.

If “Pappa Paradise” does end up on Hikaru Utada’s next studio album, I do wonder which version they’ll include. This doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to bring up, especially as I suspect that both versions would end up being included. But I do wonder, because I do think Japanese albums need to start being more curated. I know this is something many J-pop fans have also thought about over the years, due to the model of albums featuring 2 years worth of singles and their B-sides, resulting in albums releasing which only have 3–4 new songs. And then there is the lack of cohesion which can occur when an album is comprised of singles which were produced on a single-by-single basis, often for specific tie-ins, with no regard for these songs having to sit on an album together. And I think album curation is more important now than before in this age of streaming, the HUGE scaling back of physical single releases and the boom in vinyl sales. Albums can’t just be singles dumps any more. And we’ve been seeing Hikaru and Sony play around a lot with the timings of releases and the formats. So I hope this is something they play around with and consider for Hikaru’s next album. Although I will say, the singles dumping hasn’t affected the cohesiveness of Hikaru Utada’s albums as bad as it has some other Japanese acts.

HENNYWAY.

I like this version of “Pappa Paradise”.

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