generasia:Featured article for 2023 week 30
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. She is most well-known for singing the themes for the Kingdom Hearts video game series and her song contributions to the Neon Genesis Evangelion film series Evangelion Shin Gekijouban.
Utada's debut album, First Love, sold two million copies in its first week in Japan, topped the Oricon charts for six non-consecutive weeks, and went on to sell six million more throughout the rest of 1999. The album is the #1 best selling album in Asian music history with over 7.65 million copies sold in Japan alone. Her following album Distance was released in early 2001 and spawned Utada's biggest hit singles—"Addicted to You", "Wait & See ~Risk~" and "Can You Keep a Secret?"—which became million-sellers. The album was commercially successful and broke several sales records after three million copies were sold in its first week of availability in Japan, instantly becoming the country's fastest-selling album. In 2002, her third album, Deep River, was released and went on to become one of Japan's top-selling records of all-time. Subsequent full-length releases—Exodus, Ultra Blue, and HEART STATION—all achieved million-selling status certified by the Recording Industry Association of Japan. After a prolonged hiatus, Utada released acoustic-driven Fantôme and Hatsukoi, which both reached #1 on the Oricon album charts.
In total, Utada has sold over 38,000,000 million records in Japan, and three 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 2000-2009 decade by The Japan Times.
Her digital single, "Gold ~Mata Au Hi Made~", is released this week on July 28th.
