Distance is the third studio album by Japanese-American singer Hikaru Utada. Toshiba EMI released it on March 28, 2001, making it their second release with the label. Utada wrote and co-produced the majority of the album, alongside previous collaborators Akira Miyake and Teruzane Utada, as well as new collaborations with American producers Rodney Jerkins and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Distance, like its predecessor First Love (1999), is influenced by pop music and R&B, with additional hip-hop, rock, reggae, and techno influences from Western music.
Music critics praised the overall sound and production quality of Distance, earning Utada numerous awards and recognitions as a result of its critical success. Distance was released on the same day as Ayumi Hamasaki's greatest hits album A Best (2001), a coincidence which Avex Trax had organised. This resulted in extensive coverage in both Japanese and Western music media. Despite its marketing and competition, Distance was a huge commercial success. It ascended to number one on the Oricon Albums Chart with the highest-ever first-week sales in music history until Adele's 25 14 years later, and eventually became the fourth best-selling album of all time in Japan.
To promote the album, Utada released four singles: "Addicted to You," "Wait & See (Risk)," "For You / Time Limit" and "Can You Keep a Secret?." All four releases were successful in the Japanese market, selling over a million copies and becoming best-sellers. They promoted the album by performing two shows in Japan: Bohemian Summer 2000 and a special Unplugged event, both of which resulted in live releases. Furthermore, a video collection titled Utada Hikaru Single Clip Collection Vol. 2 was released, which included all of the album's music videos.
Background and recording
First Love, Utada's major-label debut studio album, was released in March 1999 via Toshiba EMI. First Love, which they co-wrote and produced with Teruzane Utada and Akira Miyake, was a commercial success throughout the year, becoming the best-selling album in Japanese music history. With a string of successful singles, Utada quickly rose to prominence in Japan, where they were ranked fifth on the Tokyo Hot 100's Top 100 Artists of the 20th Century, as voted on by stations and listeners. During the summer of 1999, their final summer vacation as a high school student, they performed a video concert called Luv Live Remix: Hello From New York, a charity concert called Soukenbicha Natural Breeze Concert '99 with TLC and Monica, made their first TV commercial appearance, and recorded a new song that was called “Addicted To You.” During their last summer vacation as a high school student in 1999, Utada flew to Minneapolis and produced "Addicted To You" with Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, the production team that has worked with artists such as TLC and Janet Jackson. The follow-up, “Wait & See (Risk),” was also produced by Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, but this time Utada was unable to make it to Minneapolis due to schoolwork; however, Utada even made an arrangement track for the song in the demo tape stage, which was retained in the actual arrangement, and Utada's name was added to the arranger's credits for the first time.
On January 26, 2001, Utada announced on their official website that recording for the album Distance had been completed. Akira Miyake, who has been Utada's producer since their debut, wrote a "Post-Recording Notes" on Utada's official website on February 2, 2001, saying:
Composition
Musically, Distance expands on their previous studio album's R&B-influenced sound while also incorporating jazz, pop music, hip-hop, and rock elements. According to Ian Martin, writing for AllMusic, the tracks produced by Jerkins, Jam, and Lewis had a "rich production" as opposed to the "cheap, tinny" sound of Japanese pop at the time. "Can You Keep a Secret?" was billed as a J-pop song with "sophisticated" songwriting and production standards. "Sunglasses" is a medium-slow number that features an ensemble that intersects with a falsetto. "For You" is an R&B pop ballad. Utada also said the following about the title in an interview : The song received high marks for its production quality and sound, with praise towards its producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Commercially, it reached number one on the Oricon Singles Chart and was certified quadruple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) for shipments of over 1.6 million. It is Utada's second best-selling physical single behind "Automatic/Time Will Tell," which sold a combined 2.06 million copies. The album's second single, "Wait & See (Risk)", was released on April 19, 2000, with a physical edition that included a few B-side tracks and remixes. Critics also praised the single's sound and production value. It reached number one on the Oricon Singles Chart and was the album's second single to receive a quadruple RIAJ certification.
On June 30, 2000, the songs "For You" and "Time Limit" were packaged together and released as double A-side single. Both tracks had music videos, with Utada performing the song live. It received positive reviews from critics and debuted at number one on the Oricon Singles Chart. The single was certified triple platinum by the RIAJ after shipping over 1.2 million units in Japan. The fourth and final single from the album, "Can You Keep a Secret?" debuted on February 16, 2001. "Can You Keep a Secret?" served as the theme song to the 2001 dorama Hero, in which Utada appeared as an actor. The song received positive reviews from publications and debuted at number one on the Oricon Singles Chart, earning them a final triple platinum certification from the RIAJ. It also received platinum and gold certifications for exceeding 250,000 digital downloads and 50 million streams, respectively.
The song "Distance" was originally planned to be a single without any alterations, but it was instead released in a rearranged ballad form called "Final Distance" in memory of a fan who died in the June 2001 Ikeda school massacre; this new version would appear in their next album, Deep River. Utada performed two shows in Japan to promote the album. The first was the Bohemian Summer 2000 show, which was released live on December 9, 2000, several months before Distance. A special event called Utada Hikaru Unplugged began in 2001, followed by a live release on November 28, 2001. This footage was taken from the unplugged live performance that aired on MTV Japan on August 12, 2001, in front of an audience of about 120 people at Tennoz Studio. Furthermore, a video collection titled Utada Hikaru Single Clip Collection Vol. 2 was released on September 27, 2001, which included all of the album's music videos as well as behind-the-scenes footage for each video.
Critical reception
Distance was re-released worldwide on January 23, 2019, via digital and streaming services, with a double vinyl edition re-issued in Japan by Universal Music on March 10, 2022.
Toshiba EMI had scheduled the album's release date for March 28. At the same time, Japanese record label Avex Trax planned to release A Best, the greatest hits album by Japanese singer Ayumi Hamasaki. Avex's strategy was to compete with Utada's album, as both Hamasaki and Utada were at the peak of their popularity at the time. The announcement of both album release dates sparked widespread controversy in Japanese and Western media, with claims that the two singers were "rivals" in professional as well as personal circumstances. Both singers claimed it was a label-sponsored campaign, with Hamasaki expressing her displeasure over a lack of material and creative control of A Best.
Both albums received extensive promotion prior to their release on March 28, but both were extremely successful in terms of first-week sales. In Japan, Distance ascended to number one on the Oricon Albums Chart, while A Best debuted at number two. Distance sold 3,002,720 copies in its first week and became the fastest-selling album in music history, a record it held until 2015, when Adele's third album 25 sold 3.4 million copies in its first week in the United States. It topped the charts for two nonconsecutive weeks while being dethroned by A Best in the second week. Distance had sold 4,404,290 units by the end of 2001, making it the best-selling album of the year, with A Best coming in second. Utada also topped the annual singles chart that year with “Can You Keep A Secret?” and dominated the singles and albums charts for the year.
The Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) certified the album quadruple million for selling more than four million copies, and Oricon reports that it sold more than 4.472 million in Japan. Oricon named it the best-selling Japanese album of the 2000s, and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) ranked it as the tenth best-selling record of 2001. The album is currently the fourth best-selling album in Japan, trailing only Glay's greatest hits album Review and B'z's The Best's "Pleasure" and Utada's studio album First Love, the best-selling record in Japanese history.
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Personnel
Personnel details were sourced from the Distance liner notes booklet.
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Monthly charts
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Yearly chart
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All-time chart
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!scope="row"|Japanese Albums (Oricon)
Release history
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! scope="row"| Japan
| March 28, 2001
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