It’s been a minute, an hour – well, much longer really – but the music video for Hikaru Utada‘s “Time” is finally here. It just, you know, took some…time.
Following her song’s release back in May, Hikki unveiled the accompanying visual for “Time,” which doubled as the theme song for Nippon TV’s Sunday drama, Gourmet Detective Akechi Goro, early on Tuesday (July 28) morning.
The music video was filmed at home in lockdown amid the pandemic with a minimum required number of staff, having passed a preliminary inspection for safety and given the go-ahead to film.
Anthony Gaddis and Eric Tilford directed the video, known for the late Mac Miller‘s “Good News” and “Everybody.” It was shot at Hikaru’s home in London, produced in Los Angeles, and remotely in Japan – the power of socially distanced collaboration at work.
What starts off as a typical enough at-home recording studio style video, a la “Prisoner of Love,” gradually evolves into more acid trippy territory as the clip progresses, as she starts having us seeing double, then triple in a blur of animation-meets-real life – vaguely resembling both her “Automatic” couch era look and the “Keep Tryin'” single artwork, eventually appearing as a little army of psychedelic Hikkis. As the song takes off into its Bop Section™ of a bridge, Hikaru lets loose herself and throws on some sunglasses for a little dance party for one – with a special cameo from her giant stuffed bear, Kumachan, of course.
“Time” sort of embodies the shared experience of vaguely losing it while in isolation for an undetermined amount of time – some random spurts of productivity, cathartic dancing in the dark, and some casual hallucinations as reality starts to blur.
With any luck, all that time Hikaru’s spent filming music videos and grinding at home means we’ll hopefully have a quarantine album to escape into soon enough…if she hasn’t spent this whole time dancing with her bear, that is.
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Photo credit: Sony Music