Asian artists going West: Coco Lee & Utada Hikaru

The title of this post is a question that I ponder all too often. The western music charts are dominated by white, black, Latino and European artists, but Asians barely register. In recent times, we’ve seen a couple of ethnically Asian acts, Jay Sean [Wikipedia | Official site | Twitter] and Far East Movement [Wikipedia | Official website | Twitter], achieve US chart-topping success, but we’re still a far cry from having Asian acts that are actually from Asia do well.

Over the years, various Asian artists have put out English language albums, many of them pretty good, but for whatever reason they haven’t been particularly successful with the mainstream pop audience. Two of my favourite such albums are Coco Lee’s [Wikipedia | Twitter] ‘Exposed’  and Utada Hikaru’s [Wikipedia | Twitter] ‘This is the one’. Let’s look at what happened. Firstly, what they did well:

• Both artists were raised in the West and so their English is fluent and American accented. This is particularly important in the US market, that only just about accepts British and Latino accented musicians, so having that fluency and sounding less like a foreigner (in songs and interviews [examples embedded below]) is important (embedded below). I wouldn’t say the West (and the US) in particular are racist, but there’s definitely a music market preference for local and Latin acts.

Coco Lee interview

Utada Hikaru interview

• Both albums had western producers, creating albums with high production values. The songs on both of these albums could stand up to, and even beat many of the songs released by western acts.

Coco Lee – “Magic words”

Utada Hikaru – “Come back to me”

Now, what they could have done better (Note: I do love both of these artists, so I don’t want to take away from their many other achievements, but I think my points below are fair criticisms):

• Both albums were overly sexual on their lyrical content. Tracks like Coco’s “So Good” (embedded below) and Utada’s “Dirty Desire” (embedded below that), are probably the most sexual examples from their respective albums, but they weren’t the only tracks. While the tracks aren’t bad in themselves (I quite like them and I’m not against sexually themed songs), I think the emphasis on sex by both of these albums was misplaced, and possibly further contribute to some of the negative western stereotypes concerning Asian women and sex. For both artists these were not their first English language albums, but neither had had particular success with their previous attempts. Going the sexual route seems a little bit like an attempt to appeal to the masses in my mind, and I think they could have had more success had they simply toned it down a bit.

Coco Lee – “So good”

Utada Hikaru – “Dirty Desire”

• Utada’s ‘This is the one’ (pictured right) album caught my attention as not having attractive packaging. Perhaps it was intentional, but I feel the cover image and font gave it an amateur feeling. By comparison, Coco Lee’s ‘Exposed’ album (pictured far right) had a more professional feel to both the photography and typography. When competing with other albums on the physical shelf, or trying to stand out on the virtual album shelves of Amazon or iTunes, people do judge by the cover.
• Given the R&B/pop market, both artists could have made better use of other established western artists to partner with on their tracks. These could have been either rappers or other singers. Utada’s album had no other artists, while some versions of Coco’s track “No doubt” (embedded below), featured Indian rapper Blaaze (Wikipedia). I think in trying to appeal to a western audience, a popular artist with a similar sound, such as Sean Paul (Wikipedia) should have been used.

Coco Lee – “No doubt” featuring Blaaze

It’s going to be interesting to watch over the next couple of years as more Asian artists attempt to go west – there appears to be a strong Korean wave beginning that could be successful, but I’ll leave that for another post.

As I said earlier in this post, both of the albums critiqued in this post are two of my favourite, and if you’re into R&B/pop, I do recommend you buy them from your favourite etailer, linked to below where available:

• Coco Lee – ‘Exposed’: Amazon.com MP3 | Amazon.co.uk MP3
• Utada – ‘This is the one’: Amazon.com CD | Amazon.com MP3 | Amazon.co.uk CD