• Source: Prisoner of Love (Hikaru Utada song)

"Prisoner of Love" is Hikaru Utada's 21st Japanese single and 30th single overall. It was cut from her fifth Japanese album, Heart Station (2008), making it her first Japanese recut single in nine years since "First Love" in 1999. "Prisoner of Love" is the theme song for the Fuji TV dorama Last Friends, making it her first song since "Sakura Drops" in 2002 to be used as a main theme song. It was released as a digital download on March 26, 2008, and as a CD single on May 21.
Musically, "Prisoner of Love" is a pop ballad heavily influenced by R&B music. The song lyrically depicts a sense of being trapped and unable to escape the intense emotions of love, highlighting the complex nature of relationships. "Prisoner of Love" received positive reception from most music critics, who praised Utada's vocal performance and production and noted the song as a standout from her vast discography.
Commercially, the song gained massive success. The physical single peaked at number two on the Oricon Singles Chart and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ). The song fared much better digitally, selling one million full-length downloads and ringtones each. An accompanying music video was shot by Wataru Takeishi, which is a recreation of the song's production. The song was performed during Utada's two date concert series Wild Life in December 2010 and has since appeared in several greatest hits albums by Utada.




Background and production



In January 2008, Utada posted a photo of the string recording of "Prisoner Of Love" on her official website. The track "Prisoner Of Love" was originally written for her English language album This Is the One, but Utada decided that she wanted to write it in Japanese, so she added Japanese lyrics and included it on the album Heart Station. When writing the English lyrics, she chose sharp lyrics, but when translating them into Japanese, she was conscious of not wanting the lyrics to sound flat, and used a crisp arrangement and singing style that is more black-like to avoid a heavy, muddy melody. Utada also said that when she first listened to this song through, she was moved to tears for the first time in a long time. At first, she wanted to make it a love song, but she was asked to write lyrics that could be interpreted as either friendship or love, as she thought there might be a tie-up with a dorama, and this made the writing process very difficult. Incidentally, the lyrics for "Prisoner of Love," as well as "Celebrate" and "Heart Station" were written in a family restaurant during a span of about three or four hours.
Musically, "Prisoner of Love" is a love song that follows an R&B influence; Utada stated that the song was inspired by the rest of the album's "honest" theme, and recognized it as her return to R&B music. According to Utada, the chord progression and the opening part are very similar to her 2000 single "Wait & See (Risk)". She had written this type of song several times before, so she had been avoiding this type of song for a while, but this was the song that she felt like writing again after a long time.




Reception


Music critics gave "Prisoner of Love" positive feedback. A reviewer from CDJournal described the song as "well-programmed" when reviewing the single. Meg from JaME World gave the song a glowing review, praising Utada's vocal performance and asserted that it was an excellent theme choice for Last Friends. Retrospectively, Neil Z. Yeung, who contributed in writing the biography of Utada at AllMusic, highlighted the song "Prisoner of Love" as some of her greatest work. It won the Best Theme Song Award in the 57th Drama Academy Awards.




Commercial performance


"Prisoner of Love" debuted at number two on the Oricon Singles Chart, selling 38,902 copies in its first week, and ranked for twelve weeks as a whole. The Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) certified the single gold in May 2008 for shipments exceeding 100,000 copies. In December 2008, Oricon named "Prisoner of Love" the 95th best-selling physical single in Japan that year, with 81,626 copies sold.
Digitally, "Prisoner of Love" was a great success in Japan. On May 13, 2008, Barks.jp reported "Prisoner of Love" had sold over 1.5 million downloads across all formats, and on July 7, 2008, Yahoo!Japan reported it had sold over 2.9 million downloads. "Prisoner of Love" was the third most downloaded song in Japan during 2008 behind Greeeen's "Kiseki" and Thelma Aoyama's "Soba ni Iru ne." The RIAJ certified "Prisoner of Love" million twice for selling over one million full-length downloads and ringtones each, as well as gold for selling over 100,000 legal downloads on PCs in the country. This pushed the tallied sales volume for the song to 2.182 million, making "Prisoner of Love" one of the best-selling multi-format singles in Japan.




Promotion


"Prisoner of Love" (Quiet Version) serves as the insert song for the Japanese television drama, Last Friends, while the original version is used in the opening theme. The song was performed during Utada's two date concert series Wild Life in December 2010.
The video for "Prisoner of Love", directed by Wataru Takeishi, features Utada writing, arranging, and composing the song. She is seen doing push-ups and punching the air, while the scene switches back to her crafting the song and having writer's block. This was Utada's idea, and almost all of the items in the video, including the various equipment, lyric notebooks, work table, sofa, etc., are her personal belongings.
The video is her first to use various references to her U3 blog. She is seen peeling and eating an orange-like fruit called a mikan, and in her blog she mentioned having a surplus of them. She is also seen drawing her inventive superhero, Super-Kuman, based on Kuma Chang, her stuffed bear, which is the subject for her song "Boku wa Kuma".




Track listing


CD+DVD Version




Chart rankings






Certifications and sales






References

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