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Hikaru Utada
Utada Hikaru (born January 19, 1983), also known by her fan-nickname of Hikki, is a third culture Japanese pop singer-songwriter.
She is one of the most successful, influential and acclaimed pop singers in Japanese music history. With the release of her seven studio albums, including one compilation and two all-English, 23 solo singles (17 Japanese and 6 English) and several VHS/DVD releases, she has sold a combined estimated total in Japan of some 32,000,000 records in Japan as of the end of 2006, making her the 9th most successful musical act ever in Japan. Her worldwide total sales of albums, singles and VHS/DVDs to date is well past 40,000,000 units. Her unusual success has been, in large part, because of her fluent bilingual skills in English and Japanese, having been raised in New York City and Tokyo. Utada became an unprecedented icon in Japan after her debut, First Love, began shattering a number of records in 1999, and has shown extremely consistent and strong sales of albums, singles and chart presence since. She has won the Golden Disk (Japan's most-esteemed musical award) "Song of the Year" award for twelve of her singles since 2000, a record for a solo or group artist. In addition, she has won the Golden Disk "Pop/Rock Album of the Year" award for all but one of her Japanese studio albums.
In 2003, HMV Japan announced that Utada Hikaru is the #24 Japanese pop artist in its survey of "Top 100 Japanese pop artists" of all-time, making her the youngest artist with the highest rank in that survey.[1] In 2006, Utada Hikaru also became #10 in "Top 30 Best Japanese Singers of All Time" [2].
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