Utada Hikaru is one of the most popular and richest Singer who was born on January 19, 1983 in Manhattan, New York, United States. Utada Hikaru (宇多田 ヒカル , born January 19, 1983) , who is also known as Hikaru Utada and the mononym Utada (English: /uː ˈ t ɑː d ə / , Japanese: [ɯtada] ), is a Japanese-American singer-songwriter and producer. 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 her father’s job. Eventually, a recording contract with Toshiba-EMI was signed and, under the stage name Cubic U, Utada released her 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, her 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.
Her song “Prisoner of Love” was used as the theme-song for the television drama Last Friends. Although “Prisoner of Love” was not initially released as a single alone, it reached number 1 in iTunes and the Chako-Uta charts after it was released as a single for the drama. It reached number 2 at the Oricon Weekly charts. It won Best Theme Song at the 57th Drama Academy Awards and sold 2.9 million downloads. It marked the fourth successful Utada drama tie-in (following 1999’s Majo no Jōken and First Love, 2001’s Hero and Can You Keep a Secret and 2007’s Hana Yori Dango and Flavor of Life).
By the end of the 2000s, 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 her one of Japan’s top-selling recording artists of all time with over 37 million records sold since launching her career in the late 1990s. Twelve of her singles have reached number-one on the Oricon Singles Chart, while ten of her albums have become chart-toppers. Six of her 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. Additionally, Utada is best known by international audiences for writing and producing four theme-song contributions to Square Enix and Disney’s collaborative video game series Kingdom Hearts: “Simple and Clean”, “Sanctuary”, “Don’t Think Twice” and “Face My Fears”.
In 2001, Utada recorded the song “Blow My Whistle” for the action-comedy film Rush Hour 2. It was a collaboration with American rapper Foxy Brown, and was written by Utada alongside Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo. The song is included on Def Jam’s Rush Hour 2 soundtrack, which peaked the 11th spot on both the Billboard 200 and number 1 on the Top Soundtracks. Although Utada usually produces her own songs, Blow My Whistle was produced by The Neptunes.
Utada moved to Tokyo in the summer of 1998 and attended Seisen International School, and later the American School in Japan, while continuing to record on a new contract with Toshiba-EMI. Her movement originally came from Japanese FM radio. She opted for becoming a singer-songwriter instead of attempting to become an idol. Leading up to the release of her Japanese debut album First Love, at the age of 16, Utada released two successful million-selling singles: “Automatic/Time Will Tell” and “Movin’ On Without You”. “Automatic/Time Will Tell” sold over two million copies. Backed by her singles, her debut album First Love went on to sell over 7 million units in Japan alone (with an additional 3 million overseas, bringing it to a sum of at least 10 million units), becoming the highest selling album in Japan’s recent history. The album yielded the single “First Love”, which peaked at the #2 spot. By the end of the year, Utada was rank number 5 on a Japanese radio station Tokio Hot 100 Airplay’s Top 100 Artists of the 20th Century by the station and its listeners.
