各国名人英文介绍-Hikaru Utada（在线收听）

Hikaru Utada is one of Japan’s top singer-songwriters. She is also a talented music arranger and record producer. She is well-known among video game players for her songs on Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts games. In 2007, Utada was the best-selling artist in the world in terms of digital sales. She has three albums in Japan’s top ten all-time list.

Utada was born in New York in 1983 into a musical family. Her father was a record producer, her mother an enka singer, and her grandmother a shamisen player. Utada had music in her blood and so carried on in her parents’ footsteps. However, her first album in the States failed to be released, so she moved back to Japan.

In 1988, Utada signed a recording contract and her debut Japanese singles were huge hits. They led to the phenomenal success of her debut album ‘First Love’ in 1999. It is the best-selling Japanese album of all time, selling over 10 million copies to date worldwide. Utada was ranked number five on a Tokyo radio station’s top 100 artists of the 20th Century.

In mid-2004, Utada moved back to New York to record an English-language album. Two songs from it, "You Make Me Want to Be a Man" and "Devil Inside" topped the US dance chart. A year later she returned to Japan and made her fourth album ‘Ultra Blue’. Her next album ‘Heart Station’ was released in 2008 and is her fifth consecutive number one.