Hikaru Utada, also known mononymously as Utada, is a Japanese-American singer, songwriter, and record producer. They are considered to be one of the most influential and best-selling musical artists in Japan. They are perhaps best known by international audiences for writing and performing four theme-songs to Square Enix and Disney's Kingdom Hearts video game series: "Simple and Clean", "Sanctuary", "Don't Think Twice", and "Face My Fears". Utada was born in New York City to Japanese parents, record producer Teruzane Utada and enka singer Keiko Fuji. They began to write songs at an early age and often traveled to Tokyo as a result of their father's job. Adopting the stage name Cubic U, they signed with Toshiba-EMI to release their English-language debut album, Precious. Released the following year, their second album and Japanese-language debut, First Love, leaned further into R&B and dance-pop influences; it was a commercial success, becoming Japan's best-selling album of all time. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikaru_...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)
