Can You Keep A Secret?

There is a playful tension running through this song between what is said and what is withheld, the question in the title hanging over every chorus like a game between two people who both know the answer. The production is bright and confident — forward-moving R&B pop with an international sheen that reflected Utada's particular position as an artist formed equally by Japanese and American musical culture. Her voice here is more extroverted than on some of her introspective work, carrying a teasing warmth that suits the lyrical register of intimate secrets and the specific electricity of new romantic possibility. The arrangement gives her room to move — rhythmic spaces where the vocal improvises around the written melody, moments where the music pulls back and her delivery becomes almost conversational. This was the sound of someone who understood that charm is a form of control, that the person who asks the questions holds all the power in an exchange. Culturally it was part of a remarkable streak of releases that had established her as something unprecedented in Japanese pop — an artist whose commercial success and artistic credibility seemed to amplify rather than compromise each other. It belongs to new relationships in their most electrically charged phase, to long phone calls that end too soon.