Utada Hikaru

My hero is Utada Hikura. She's my hero because her songs are very inspiring (and also because they are very nice to listen to). Others might find it odd that I know about Utada or that I even heard about her, for the simple fact that she is in Japan and I'm in New York, but that just shows that music is really a universal thing. Even though her music is (some of the time) Japanese, I think that I can really understand the message that she is trying to get though. I first found out about Utada Hikura when I was playing a video game call "Kingdom hearts". The video game used her song "Simple and Clean" for the intro of the game and the complete song at the end of the game. She sang "Simple and Clean" in English so that is how I was able to understand it (although she has a Japanese version, that has the same beat but the words are different (it was called Hikura, which in English means light)). At first I didn't know that she was Japanese because her English sounded good and since that was the only song that I knew (and basically heard of), I decided to start doing research on her, to see what I could find, and I found a huge list of songs she has sung. I started looking for these songs to listen to (I was wondering how they sounded). Then later that year "Kingdom Hearts 2" came out, which they also used one of her songs, which was called "Sanctuary". (It also had a Japanese version called Passion). I later did more research and found that her songs were used for many things in Japan (For example, Anime (are Japanese cartoons), Games, and Movies)

Hikaru Utada(宇多田光) also known as Hikki (to her fans and also her friends), was born on January 19, 1983 in New York, to Japanese parents, who had roots in the Japanese music industry (she was born with musical genes). Her mother Junko Utada was an Enka singer who performed under the stage name Keiko Fuji. Junko and her mother (Hikaru grandmother) were also blind Shamisen players (a traditional instrument in japan used in the Edo-period and is still used today). Hikaru's father was a record producer. By the age of twelve she made her first professional recording with her mother, she released the song under the band name of U3 (which was also known as Utada 3)(the name U3 represent that she is the third generation of the Utadas) She worked with the band until 1996 when she started her first solo project, which she called "I'll Be Stronger". "I'll Be Stronger" was the first song that Hikaru wrote which was release under the artist name "Cubic U." However the song failed to be released in the United States. Then in 1997 she started her next project.

Her next project was in 1998 it was to debut her single "Close To You", which was one of the songs in her album labeled "The Carpenter's Song." Later that same time she released the album "Precious" which also failed to make it to the United States due to restructuring issues. Later on she released "Precious" in Japan on January 28, 1998 and then later re-released it on March 31, 1999 for a much better success. It has sold 702,060 copies to date in Japan, making it a significant hit for an all-English album in that market.