Website |
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Born in the United States to Japanese parents, record producer Utada Teruzane and enka singer Keiko Fuji, Utada began to write music and lyrics at an early age and often traveled to Tokyo as a result of their father's job. Eventually, a recording contract with Toshiba-EMI was signed and, under the stage name Cubic U, Utada released their English-language debut album Precious in early 1998, but it was a commercial failure. In the following year, heavily influenced by R&B and dance-pop, their Japanese-language debut First Love was released and became an instant success. Backed by the massive success of singles "Automatic," "Time Will Tell," and "Movin' On Without You," the album 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. First Love eventually became the country's best-selling album of all time.
By the end of the '00s, Utada was deemed "the most influential artist of the decade" in the Japanese music landscape by The Japan Times. Utada's commercial success has made them one of Japan's top-selling recording artists of all time with over 37 million records sold since launching their career in the late '90s. Twelve of their singles have reached number-one on the Oricon Singles Chart, while ten of their albums have become chart-toppers. Six of their full-length releases are among the country's highest-selling albums of all time, including First Love, Distance and Deep River, which are among the top ten best-selling records of Japan's music history.
Utada has performed theme songs for all of the four Evangelion reboot movies, as well as for Freedom and To Your Eternity.
Additionally, they are also known by international audiences for writing and producing four theme-songs to the video game series Kingdom Hearts.
(Source: Wikipedia)
