Hikaru Utada
Hikaru Utada (宇多田 ヒカル, Utada Hikaru?), born on 19 January 1983, in Manhattan, New York, United States to Japanese parents, record producer Utada Teruzane and enka singer Keiko Fuji, they are a Japanese-American J-Pop singer-songwriter.
At the age of 16 years old, they made their name as one of Japan's top artists with their debut single "Automatic/time will tell" released on 09 December 1998 which sold over two million copies. Just a few months later, they released their first album “First Love,” which set the record in CD sales in Japan. This record still remains unbroken. In early 2001, they released their album Distance which spawned Utada's biggest hit singles "Addicted to You", "Wait & See (Risk)" and "Can You Keep a Secret?", which became million-sellers. The album was commercially successful and broke several sales records, instantly becoming the country's fastest-selling album.
All of their albums that followed have topped the charts. In 2007, their single “Flavor Of Life” set the world record in number of downloads.
In 2010, they took a break from their music activities to focus on their life as a person. In April 2016, they went full-throttle with their artist activities by releasing the singles “Hanataba Wo Kimini” and “Manatsu No Tooriame.”
Since Utada had not read the film's script before writing the theme songs for any of the first three Rebuild films,[1] For "Beautiful World", Utada took her inspirations from Shinji wanting to see his friends and the real world again at the end of End of Evangelion, and Asuka's realization that she did desire love from other people.[2] Utada's relationship with her mother, a musician herself, and her mental illness later in life influenced her Evangelion songs. For this reason, she identified with Asuka the most out of all Evangelion characters.[3] For "Sakura Nagashi", wrote the song based on vague descriptions.[4] Because director Hideaki Anno told her to simply write how she felt and Utada felt she could still not understand anything that happened in the film, Utada drew instead on her feelings on the recent death of her mother as well as the 2011 Japan earthquake, which had happened days before she was requested to write the song.[5]
- The song "Beautiful World" was used used as the main theme of the film Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone.
- The song "Beautiful World -PLANiTb Acoustica Mix-" was used used as the main theme of the film Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance.
- The song "Sakura Nagashi" was used used as the main theme of the film Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo.
- The song "One Last Kiss" was used used as the main theme of the film Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time.
External Links[]
References[]
- ↑ https://twitter.com/utadahikaru/status/1378156202069229569
- ↑ Hikaru Utada's official interview on 26 June 2007 on Beautiful World
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20210314132410/http://dekakoushi.blog110.fc2.com/blog-entry-326.html
- ↑ https://twitter.com/utadahikaru/status/270162423909076992
- ↑ https://www.musicvoice.jp/news/47443/