One of Japan's biggest selling artists of all time, and by far my favourite J-Pop artist/Asian artist, Utada Hikaru, has announced she is to go on indefinite hiatus :(

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=12329399

 

All her fans around the world are shocked at this announcement, and it's unknown whether her break from music is temporary or permanent... She is best known outside of Japan in the US. Her English album Exodus reached number 160 on the Billboard 200, and the single Devil Inside reached 1 on the Dance Radio Airplay chart in the US. She was less successful in the UK unfortunately, with her only UK single to date, You Make Me Wanna Be A Man, reaching a lowly 227. Her biggest US single came with the album This Is The One (which reached 67 on the Billboard 200). This was Come Back To Me (which reached 93 on the Pop 100, and also hit top 100 on US iTunes). Her placings on the Billboard may not seem much, but for a Japanese artist in the US market I think they are extremely brilliant.

 

In addition, her debut Japanese album First Love is the biggest selling album ever in Japan, selling 7,650,215 units, about 2 and a half million more than the second biggest. She also has 2 other albums in the top 10 (Distance with 4,169,435 sales - 3 million of which were achieved in it's debut week!!!! - and Deep River in 8th place with 3,604,588 sales). I really hope this hiatus is only a year or two, but unfortunately it sounds as if she's really fed up with music (it's dominated her whole life since she was 15, and got worse after First Love's sucsess), and she doesn't want to make any more music, so I think it'll be a permanent hiatus - ie Utada has quit music. I know most of you won't care or have heard of her, but I thought I take this oppurnity to educate you in her music, as a fan. I'm a loon or anything (my heart firmly belongs to Gaga :lol:) but I'm a fan and wanted to introduce you lot to this amazing talent, and in the unlikely case there are any fans here, alert you to the fact she has most probably quit music. Sorry for the essay, but I wanted to show you all she's achieved! Here's a few of her songs:

Edited December 9, 201014 yr by Liam...!

Thanks for the info. :lol:

 

'First Love' is the only song I can remember from her TBH.

LOL like the article says, she announced this ages ago. Why have they only just wrote an article about it?

Not a big deal for me really... I got to see her live in February which was pretty much a dream come true.

Huge JPop fan, although my interest is slowly dwindling. Hikki was the only one out of everyone I follow who always remained 100% consistent. Ayu is so hit and miss these days (mainly miss :() and Kuu the same, though I enjoy her recent output far more than Ayumi's.