Hikaru Utada holds the distinction of having Japan's all-time top-selling album: her 1999 debut set, First Love has sold about 10 million copies. Including First Love, Utada has so far sold more than 17 million albums and 16 million singles. Born and raised in New York, "Hikki" has music in her blood: her parents are music producer Teruzane Utada, and Junko Utada, who in the 1970s was one of Japan's top singers, under the name of Keiko Fuji. Utada's music, although basically...

Hikaru Utada holds the distinction of having Japan's all-time top-selling album: her 1999 debut set, First Love has sold about 10 million copies. Including First Love, Utada has so far sold more than 17 million albums and 16 million singles. Born and raised in New York, "Hikki" has music in her blood: her parents are music producer Teruzane Utada, and Junko Utada, who in the 1970s was one of Japan's top singers, under the name of Keiko Fuji. Utada's music, although basically pop, has more of an R&B feel than most J-pop. And girl-next-door Utada is less in thrall to the whole "geinokai" Japanese showbiz system compared with idol-style stars like Hamasaki - Utada's TV appearances are few and far between, for example. Utada also writes her own songs, which also sets her apart from many other luminaries of the J-pop scene. In 2002 she signed with Island Def Jam, part of the giant Universal Music Group, as an English-language performer, while still under contract to Japanese label Toshiba-EMI as a Japanese-language artist. The unprecedented Island Def Jam deal resulted in Utada's English-language Exodus album in autumn 2004, which unfortunately failed to click with American music fans, proving once again just how hard it is for Japanese acts to break Stateside.