Utada Hikaru
Utada Hikaru
Utada Hikaru, who also goes by the mononym Utada, is a Japanese American singer and songwriter. After releasing the commercially unsuccessful English-language album Precious under the stage name "Cubic U" in 1998, she rose to prominence in 1999 with the release of her second album, First Love, which sold over eight million copies in Japan and became the best selling Japanese-language album of all time...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth19 January 1983
CountryJapan
I'd been familiar with the recording process since I was little, but I felt that this is what it's like to actually do it myself.
When people ask me exactly how much time I spend in each country, I always tell them I have no idea.
For cubic U I didn't know how it all got started at all.
But in Japanese, there's actually not much of a relationship between the music and the words.
And also, I think Japan places great value on the lyrics.
It's just that, when I'm in Japan I could foretell to a certain degree what would be accepted, so I certainly don't come up with any crazy arrangements.
For me, it's an experiment to see what people are gonna think of it.
And it was then that I realized wow, I'm able to write lyrics and sing and stuff like that.
Actually, the fun part was not knowing what the heck I was going to be doing.
Because when you're making something, if it overlaps with something or if it's like anything else, that doesn't really count as a creation, right?
Sort of like, I have to make the Japanese lyrics really deep.
I can never really enjoy being famous.
In Japan, people don't really sing about sexual content.
I'm not like a gorgeous bombshell or anything like that.