The Quadrangle

Issue date: 10/6/04 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Don't even think about calling Utada "the Japanese Britney Spears". While she has sold over 24 million copies of her Japanese-language albums, Utada, (pronounced 'ooh-ta-dah'), cringes when she hears that phrase. Sure, they are both young, female, multi-platinum selling, singers, but that is where the similarities end. It is important to Utada that she is known as a songwriter first and a singer second. Utada writes, composes, arranges, and in many cases, produces all of her own music. Not to mention, Utada may be younger than Spears, having just turned 21, but she has been faithfully, happily, married to her husband and video director since she was 19 years old.

Beyond all that hype and empty media comparison, Utada really is one of the most talented, creative, and entertaining young artists on the face of the planet. Her Japanese debut album, First Love, came out when she was only 17 years old, and has quickly become the highest selling album in Japanese sales history, selling well over 10 million copies. Two multi-platinum albums later, numerous sold out concerts all over Japan, and a greatest hits album that had the third best first-week-sales of this year on the global charts, selling 1.4 million in the first week and beating Usher's 1.3 million opening week for Confessions, Utada is ready to conquer the West, as she releases her English, debut album, EXODUS on October 5, 2004 in the United States through Island-Def Jam Records.

Utada was actually born and raised in New York City with a very musical background. Her father, a music producer, and her mother, famous when she was younger singing traditional music in Japan, passed on this taste for music to their daughter, who wrote and recorded her own English album by the age of 12, but it only had an underground release on vinyl. When Utada was 15 or so, the family moved to Japan, where Utada attended an international high school and had to improve on her Japanese skills.

Utada improved her Japanese, and got a Japanese recording contract with Toshiba-EMI Records to release a Japanese album, which was her now famous debut album, First Love. She has actually had her American record contract for a few years now, but due to many delays, including Utada having to have emergency surgery on a benign tumor on her ovary, many people were beginning to doubt if she would ever have her chance in America after all.

Utada was chosen to do a song with rapper Foxy Brown, Blow My Whistle, produced by The Neptunes, for the Rush Hour 2 movie soundtrack. Video game fans may remember her song Simple & Clean as the theme from the hit PlayStation game Kingdom Hearts. News started surfacing a year back about Utada finally finishing work on tracks for her much anticipated American debut album. Details were very vague at first, but in the last few months, everything has started to come together.

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