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
In English, the sounds and melodies I created were an inspiration to me, and words came to me as I explored the sounds, and from there I was able expand on the meaning.
Since I was doing all of it myself, I had to decide where I wanted to go with the songs, how to proceed with the chords, if the sound was alright, and all that detail on my own.
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.
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.
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.
I get strangely obsessed about the cleanliness of my house.