page_title: Exodus (Utada Hikaru album)
section_title: Music and style
hierarchical_section_title: Exodus (Utada Hikaru album) / Composition / Music and style
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Aaliyah in Berlin May 2000 English: American musician Aaliyah visiting Berlin, Germany on May 14, 2000.
context_page_description: Exodus is the second English language album by Japanese singer-songwriter Utada, released on September 8, 2004 by Island Records. After being discovered in North America by Island CEO Lyon Cohen when she contributed to the Rush Hour 2 soundtrack, he was very interested in signing Utada to his record label and she eventually accepted the offer. She traveled to Los Angeles, California to sign the contract and began recording the studio album straight after her signing. However, during the time frame from 2002 and 2003, Utada was diagnosed with a benign ovarian tumour that needed surgery and treatment. She also married her then-husband Kazuaki Kiriya, which stopped recording temporarily.
  Musically, Exodus incorporates several musical genres including dance music and electronic music, whilst also incorporating several elements from electronica, avant-garde, alternative and glitch music. Exodus is her first studio album to have full English-language tracks since her album Precious under the alias Cubic U.
context_section_description: Musically, Exodus is a dance-oriented album that incorporates several electronic genres. The album was co-produced by Utada herself. Utada made the majority of the album alone, saying she "locked [herself] away". During an interview in the United States while promoting This Is the One in 2009, when asked about Exodus, Utada said that Exodus was "a very experimental album. I was like a mad scientist working away in an underground laboratory", going on to say "I had the time of my life but it was a very intense, introverted process". In the review by AllMusic, they commented on the music, stating Exodus "delivers a diverse collection of urbane, modern, and, at times, almost avant-garde electronica and dance music [...] A true fusion of Western and Eastern music's edgier elements thrown together in an after-hours disco melting pot."
  The majority of the album deals with dance music and traditional J-pop. "Devil Inside" incorporates several electronic dance genres including progressive house and dark pop. The song features drum machines and synthesizers and Rob Carolan from Stylus Magazine compared it to Super Mario games during their intro sequences. Carolan had originally labelled the album's musical composition as "strange" and exemplified "Hotel Lobby" as an example for incorporating J-pop. "The Workout" was compared to Gwen Stefani's 2005 track "Hollaback Girl" for its instrumentation of colossal drums and horn parts but was often criticized for being "darker" and "demented." The Timbaland co-written single "Exodus 04" takes homage towards the album title and was compared to the composition by American rapper and singer Aaliyah, with instrumentation of string samples and piano, while "Let Me Give You My Love" incorporates more fast forward "future funk music" that was also compared to Aaliyah.
  Exodus was noted by several critics for its experimentation of genres. "Kremlin Dusk" features a dark "bizarre neo-industrial symphony" that also references American poet Edgar Allan Poe's story The Raven with the lyric ("In the words of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe/Now I'm sober and nevermore/Will the Raven come to bother me at home.") "Animato" includes several electronic instrumentation's including synthesizers and keyboards to create an "alien-like" sound and composition. Throughout the track, "it synthesized mournful choirs and oppressive alien electronics, pushes pop to its most avant garde extremes."
caption: Tracks from Exodus were heavily compared to American recording artist Aaliyah (pictured).
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