generasia:Featured article for 2019 week 3
Utada Hikaru
Utada Hikaru (宇多田ヒカル) is a Japanese pop singer-songwriter under the Virgin Records label. Utada is one of Japan's most successful artists of all time. Her debut album First Love is the #1 best selling album in Asian music history with over 7.65 million copies sold in Japan alone. In total she has sold over 38,000,000 million records in Japan, and 3 of her albums are in the Top 10 best-selling albums of all time in Japan (#1, #4, #8), making her one of the most successful and popular singers in J-pop history. She has been deemed the Most Influential Japanese Artist of the past decade (2000-2009) by The Japan Times.
Utada is bilingual as she was raised in both New York and Tokyo. She is also known in the west under her English language project name 'Utada', most famous for singing the Kingdom Hearts theme song, "Hikari / Simple And Clean" and the Kingdom Hearts II theme song, "Passion / Sanctuary". Initially, Utada's music had a heavy R&B style to it, but later her music progressed to a more pop-experimental tone. Her distinct R&B sound brought her much attention with her first release in Japan, "Automatic / time will tell".
Her 22nd Japanese single "Face My Fears" is released this week on January 18th.
