Beautiful World/Kiss & Cry

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Beautiful World/Kiss & Cry is a Utada Hikaru EP. The EP was released on 29 August 2007 as her second single for 2007.^[1]

Beautiful World/Kiss & Cry includes three new songs. The title track, "Beautiful World", is being used as the theme song for the first installment of the Rebuild of Evangelion film series, and a new 2007 remix of "Fly Me to the Moon", also included on the single, will be featured in the trailers of the film. "Kiss & Cry", the second A-side of the single, was featured as the new "Freedom Cup Noodles" commercial tie-in song.^[2]

On 14 July 2007 Utada released a preview of "Beautiful World" along with the single's cover. There is now a PV available for public interest for "Kiss & Cry" made up of screenshots of characters from the Freedom Project anime lip-synching to the song. So far, it has received negative reactions from her fans, most likely and reportedly since the PV does not feature Utada indefinitely in any fashion. Her Japanese site did publish a magazine schedule that would be posting advertisements promoting this new single throughout August and September. On 30 July 2007, and a TV schedule of performances on 01 August 2007. On 07 August 2007, a radio promotion schedule for the single, mainly of prerecorded clips that will air throughout Japan, was also added to her Japanese website.

As a follow-up to "Flavor of Life"'s blog, EMI has created another website with clips of the PVs of "Beautiful World" and "Kiss & Cry" that can be pasted onto blogs. These clips will last until mid-September.^[3]

The single debuted at #3 with first week sales of 94,000, making this single a relatively strong success for Hikaru on the Oricon Singles chart. On the World Charts, the single garnered 75,000 points and peaked at position #27.

Tracklist[]

^[4]

"Beautiful World"[]

"Beautiful World" debuted on the radio and was released as a ringtone on 23 July 2007.^[5] The song is now available on CD and as a digital download from the Japanese iTunes Store. The song was originally planned to have a June/July release; however, early feedback for it had been quite positive. Sanspo.com describes the song as an "upbeat yet sad song" that fits Eva quite well.^[6] Another earlier listener, the writer of the official EVA blog, was also quite impressed with the song. A preview of the song was released on her official webpage.^[7] It has had a very positive reaction by almost all of her fans, and has an extremely experimental and up-tempo tone in the vein of many of the tracks from her then-latest Japanese studio album Ultra Blue. "Beautiful World" has been immensely successful in the Japanese download market for ringtones and full songs, reaching #1 on virtually every chart that it appeared on, and has also outplaced "Kiss & Cry" on every Airplay chart that either have charted on. It hit #1 on the prestigious MTV Japanese chart and the CDTV Top 100 chart. According to the Best Top Sellers 2007 iTunes Japan, "Beautiful World" was the third most downloaded song in Japan.

The promotional video (PV) for "Beautiful World" is a montage of its Evangelion tie-in. For many, this PV has been a point of contention since Utada does not appear in the PV.^[8]

The lyrics of the song offer insight into the female singer's feelings, implied to be Misato Katsuragi but could also fit Rei Ayanami, for protagonist Shinji Ikari over the course of the film. "Beautiful World" is played during the closing credits of the film, preceding the preview for the then-upcoming second Rebuild of Evangelion film, Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance. It also features on preview clips of the first film. Since Utada had not read the film's script before writing the theme songs for any of the first three Rebuild of Evangelion films,^[9] Utada took her inspirations from Shinji wanting to see his friends and the real world again at the end of The End of Evangelion, and Asuka's realization that she did desire love from other people.^[10] Utada's relationship with her mother, a musician herself, and her mental illness later in life influenced her EVA songs. For this reason, out of all the Eva characters she identified the most with Asuka.^[11]

The song was remade in 2009 for the second Rebuild of Evangelion film as "Beautiful World -PLANiTb Acoustica Mix-". It was released as a digital download on 28 June 2009. Utada worked with Russell McNamara, who had previously made remixes of her songs "Distance", "Traveling", "Hikari" and "Simple and Clean" between 2001–2002. The song did well on the charts. It reached #8 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100, and #1 on iTunes' Japan Top Songs and at Recochoku.

"Beautiful World -PLANiTb Acoustica Mix-" is a remix of "Beautiful World" by Utada Hikaru. In May 2009, Hikaru Utada was announced to return to the series and provide the theme song for the second film in the Rebuild of Evangelion film series, Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance.^[12] "Beautiful World" was re-released in 2009 as "Beautiful World -PLANiTb Acoustica Mix-" for the release of the film after previously being released to be used as the theme song for the first film.^[13]

"Kiss & Cry"[]

The second song on the A-side, "Kiss & Cry", was revealed when the Freedom anime and the Nissin Cup Noodles TV commercials featuring it as its theme song were released on 20 April 2007. The ringtone was released on the same day and quickly rose to a top 5 ranking of Chaku-Uta download charts, and soon the song was downloaded over 300,000 times within the span of one month. It was not until one month and one day later, on 21 May 2007, that "Kiss & Cry" debuted on the radio in Japan. "Kiss & Cry" became a digital single on June 30 and her second digital single to be released in Japan. It reached a peak #1 position on iTunes Japan rankings thus far. Photo shooting for the single's promotion began on 26 Junea2w 2007, as Utada stated in her blog. The full download version of "Kiss & Cry" went on to be certified Gold by the end of June for at least 100,000+ units downloaded.^[14] While it did not quite achieve substantial sales in comparison with the phenomenal success of "Flavor of Life", "Kiss & Cry", which is her second airplay single (third if the two versions of "Flavor of Life" are counted as separate songs) in Japan for 2007, has become a top 20 smash in several Japanese radio airplay rankings, and achieved its highest peak at FM Osaka 851 (#8).^[15] Digital sales for the track would rebound its rankings back into the top 10, 5, or 3 of several Japanese online download stores and services with the first week of the physical single release.

"Kiss & Cry" was originally temporarily named "Dancing Leah" by Hikaru due to her fascination with the rising songstress Leah Dizon. "Kiss & Cry" features a strong beat in the verses that melds into synthetic elements in the bridge and chorus. The bridge of the song samples the melody from the verse of "Hotel Lobby", the seventh track off of her 2004 English language debut, Exodus.

Airplay for "Kiss & Cry" was strong on a few stations, but failed to chart on many others. Apparently, there was an inability for some stations to air the song because of the mention of Nissin Cup Noodles in the lyrics, which has also limited the television performances of "Kiss & Cry" to one on Music Station 31 August 2007.

"Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words) -2007 MIX"-[]

On 27 June 2007, "Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words) -2007 MIX-" became available for purchase on select digital download outlets such as iTunes Japan. This is also Hikaru's third Japanese digital single. It was not released for any sort of airplay except for TV commercial trailers promoting the upcoming first installment of the Rebuild of Evangelion film series. The B-side song, off of Utada's upcoming single "Beautiful World/Kiss & Cry", was used during the trailer for the Rebuild of Evangelion film released on 01 September 2007.

References[]

External Links[]

• Utada Hikaru official website - Beautiful World/Kiss & Cry PV Blog