CD
CD + DVD
1) intro
2) Curtain Call Feat ONE OK ROCK's Taka
3) Koi Uta
4) Homie
5) Lazy Feat ASOBOiSM & Kouichi Arakawa
6) Tokyo Night
7) Side Dish
8) Prologue Feat Aimer
9) Cherish
10) outro
11) Hanataba no Kawari ni Melody wo From THE FIRST TAKE (Bonus Track)
Shota's last studio album release was 2018's WHITE .
Just 1 digital released song ie. Koi Uta is included in HOPE & a live version of Shota's 19th single Hanataba no Kawari ni Melody wo is included as a bonus track .
Out of the 7 new album tracks , 3 of them are duet no.s .
The 1st duet no. Curtain Call features ONE OK ROCK's vocalist TAKA & before HOPE's physical release , the song was 1st released digitally on 7th July .
A video was made for Curtain Call . Both Shota & Taka got to know each other better through the [re:] project they worked together on last year with several other prominent J-pop artists .
The 2nd duet no. Lazy features ASOBOiSM & Kouichi Arakawa . Their participation was decided as a result of a project that Shota launched back in April in a search for artists to collaborate with .
The 3rd / last duet no. Prologue feature Aimer . A video was also made for Prologue but unlike Curtain Call , both Aimer and Shota are not featured in it + it's not included in the DVD of HOPE .
With the release of HOPE , Shota Shimizu enters Chapter 3 of his artist activities .
It's no secret that I haven't been impressed with Shota's music for the last few years & I feel that his last 3 studio albums were downright really bad as I feel that they weren't able to match up to how great his older studio albums were .
However surprisingly I did not have the same dislike towards HOPE even though auto tune is still present in the songs but something about the way they sound is quite different from what Shota done previously .
Duets wise , this's the most Shota has included in a studio album of his & I thought they're all pretty good but my favourite is definitely Prologue as it's the only duet that's a ballad and Aimer's voice compliments Shota's extremely well .
Even the standalone Shota songs in HOPE , they're not bad also & I like Cherish a lot as just like Koi Uta , both songs showcase how good vocally Shota is and he really does not need to hide his voice underneath so much autotune as he already sounds good to begin with .
I guess Shota could have excluded the intro & outro parts as they're quite reductant and HOPE probably might turn out to be yet another mini album release after last Nov's period EP but other than that , this's definitely Shota's most well thought out put together album since 2014's ENCORE .