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UTADA Hikaru (Japanese:
宇多田ヒカル) (born
January 18,
1983), or "Hikki" as she is known to fans, is a
Japanese pop music star. She was born in
New York City,
New York to Japanese parents who both had roots in the Japanese music
industry. She made her first professional recording at the age of 12, and
recorded her first album, Precious, in
1998 under the pseudonym "Cubic U."
She moved to
Tokyo later that year and attended the American School there while
continuing to record on a new contract with
Toshiba/EMI.
She soon made her mark on Japanese music with her successful single
Automatic, soon followed by the album First Love, which sold
over five million copies in a month in
March and
April of
1999 and placed Utada among the 100 wealthiest people in Japan.
Utada returned to New York in
2000 to attend
Columbia University. She continued to record while in college, and her
two subsequent albums, Distance (2001)
and Deep River (2002),
also went multi-platinum. Shortly after the release of the latter, she
announced her engagement to a photographer named Akira Taniwa. The
marriage slowed her musical career significantly, and she expressed a
desire to escape the spotlight for a while.
She is best known in the West for singing the theme to the
video game "Kingdom
Hearts," an English translation of her popular song "Hikari." Other
hit Utada songs include "First Love," "Automatic," "Wait and See," "Final
Distance," "Time Limit," "For You," "Traveling," and "Sakura Drops."
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