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It's hard not to see connections between that project and the genreless, contemporary pop of rising stars like Rina Sawayama and hyperpop experimenters like Katie Dey, who have both listed Utada as influences. The highly avant-garde electronic album has since gained a cult following among queer listeners in particular, likely for its disregard for stylistic conventions and queer-coded songs like, "You Make Me Want to Be a Man." While creating a blueprint for cross-national pop collaborations now rampant on today's charts, Utada was singing lines like, "I don't want to crossover / Between this genre, that genre," on their 2004 album Exodus. Later pursuing separate record deals in their respective countries, Utada has collaborated with an eclectic line-up of artists and producers including Timbaland, the Neptunes, Japanese megastar Ringo Sheena, and more. metropolis and Tokyo, picking up musical influences from both worlds. Born in New York City to Teruzane Utada, a record producer father, and Junko Utada, their mother who found success in the '60s and '70s as the enka (a style of Japanese ballad) singer under the name Keiko Fuji, Utada grew up between the U.S. Utada has forged their boundary-breaking legacy merely being true to themself. It's also Utada's first album since they came out as nonbinary last summer, making them one of few Japanese public figures to openly express their gender identity with that language. "Here's a Diazepam / We can each take half of / Or we can roll one up / However the night flows," Utada sings to a lover on the project's title track. Cook, and Floating Points, as well as Utada's lyrics that reference the thrill and uncertainty of budding romance.
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This sense of liberation comes through in the album's exuberant electronic pop production, featuring contributions from Skrillex, A.G. Then if people want to look into the other language they're not familiar with, they can, but it definitely gives me more freedom." "I can show a different side of me in English that might sound a bit alarming in Japanese and vice-versa. "Switching languages definitely allows me to share myself more without the filtering I have to do," Utada explains in a recent call from London, where they now live and work. It marks the first time the singer is fully integrating Japanese and English within a single project. Now 39, Utada enters a new era with Bad Mode, their eleventh album released earlier this year. Utada's timeless oeuvre is buoyed by their transcendent voice, which always sounds as if it's pulling from a deep well of emotion, always capable of evoking nostalgia at first listen. Meanwhile, their fan-favorite pop theme songs for the video game Kingdom Hearts and the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime franchises continue to soundtrack the childhoods of listeners worldwide. Since issuing their debut project at age 15 under the moniker Cubic U in 1996, Utada has released eleven adventurous and deeply heartfelt albums that alternate between Japanese and English, and survey everything from R&B and dance pop to experimental electronica and folk.
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The Japanese American pop star, whose 1999 album First Love still holds the honor of being Japan's best selling album of all time, carved out an irreplicable space in the music industry long before it understood how to market artists who eschew the barriers of language, borders and genre. Now nearly a quarter-century into their far-reaching career, Hikaru Utada is still finding new ways to express all the facets of the self. "It's my job to be honest, that's all that's required of me as an artist," Japanese American artist Hikaru Utada tells NPR.