Japanese singer Hikaru Utada and electronic music producer Skrillex have teamed up for a track from the recently released Kingdom Hearts 3 video game. The song, titled “Face My Fears” has debuted on Billboard’s Hot 100 music chart at number 98 and is Hikaru Utada’s first appearance on the US charts. While this is her first time on the American Billboard chart, Utada has had an incredibly successful career in Japan and has released many full studio albums in Japanese and a few in English.
Hikaru Utada is one of the most prominent Japanese musicians of the 21st century overall. Utada has been involved in the music of the Kingdom Hearts video game series since it began, when her song “Simple and Clean” was used as one of the original video game’s main songs. Since then, Square Enix and Disney have featured her songs throughout the series. This time she has teamed up with American music icon Skrillex for the newest game in the series.
Skrillex, who has been a major part of the electronic music industry for over a decade, is known for his remixes of tracks and the unique sounds he brings to them. “Face My Fears” is no exception, as the producer’s influence is strongly felt throughout the track. When discussing the song, Skrillex said that working on it was an amazing experience because he had been a fan of the Kingdom Hearts series since he was a kid.
Differing from the usual nature of Utada’s music, “Face My Fears” feels a lot more like an EDM track than a Japanese pop song at many times. Accompanying the release of the Kingdom Hearts game was a music video for “Face My Fears” which features scenes from the video game. The music video is made up of bits from the various cutscenes throughout the game and serves as the official video for the games main theme. The music video can be found below.
Photo Credit: Brett Padelford
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