The line 'You don't know cos you're too busy reading labels' has more gravitas to it now given the current landscape of sociopolitics and Hikaru themselves coming out as non-binary since. The lyrics to “Devil Inside” will probably take on a far greater meaning now than they did when some were listening to it back in 2004. The song is about somebody exclaiming that there might be a devil living inside of them. The title of the song tells you all you’d need to know about what to expect. Hikaru was really out here living in the future with a song made in GarageBand about getting their pussy ate under the table. And speaking of remixes and the topic of “Devil Inside” being ‘ahead of its time’, the Richard Vission remix sounds like something from Lady Gaga’s Born This Way. The unrefined sparseness of the album version of “Devil Inside” is why I often find myself listening to the Scumfrog remix instead, because it has the polish and the fullness that the original lacks, whilst still retaining the tone. Hikaru Utada’s vocals don’t feature harmonies and layers in places where I feel there should be, and where I feel Hikaru themselves would place them if the song were being recorded for a Japanese release. “Devil Inside” doesn’t sound as big as it should. A song can be simple, but still sonically sound rich. The simplicity of the music helps channel your focus, but it also highlights how unrefined the production is. Even better in fact.īut the things that sonically make “Devil Inside” cool are also the things that let it down for me. “Devil Inside” sounds as good now as it did back when it was first released.
And this lo-fi production style is one which would permeate Hip-Hop, Trap and even sectors of pop and dance many years later to this very day. The whole sound of the song is one that Kanye West would adopt for his critically acclaimed album 808s & Heartbreak 4 years later. I hate the term ‘ahead of its time’, but “Devil Inside” did in 2004 what many other artists wouldn’t do until years later. “Devil Inside” sets a clear mood, and unlike “Easy Breezy”’s awful Japanesey line, the nods to Hikaru being Japanese is in the sound itself, with the use of the koto, although maybe some feel the koto is a little too on the nose for a US release. But whilst I do feel “Devil Inside” is a little very under produced, it does have a great sound on the whole. It has a vibe as though Hikaru Utada sequenced it herself, and that it was perhaps one of her earlier attempts of putting a track together with no input from anybody else. And given how “Easy Breezy” was made the lead promotional single for Exodus over “Devil Inside”, I guess Def Jam felt it wasn’t a song Hikaru could never release in the US either.Ī criticism I had with much of Hikaru Utada’s US debut album is that the production felt a little too basic and unrefined, and “Devil Inside” falls victim to this. And it also came off like catharsis, because it was never a song that Hikaru would and could never have released in Japan. It felt like an introduction to a side of Hikaru that we hadn’t met before.
Even amongst the oddities on Exodus, there was at least a trace of the Hikaru who we’d grown accustomed to across First Love, Distance and Deep River. Very little did on Exodus really, which was part of what made it such a fresh and interesting album to listen to, even if none of it immediately gelled. “Devil Inside” was a peculiar listen initially, because it sounded nothing like anything Hikaru Utada had released before.
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