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Utada Hikaru (Born 1/19/1983) is one of Japan's most successful artists of all time, and has sold over an estimated 40,000,000
records. She is bilingual as she was raised in both New York and Tokyo. Utada Hikaru is also known in the west under her English
language project name 'Utada'. Utada also sang the Kingdom Hearts themes, Hikari / Simple and Clean and the theme songs for
Kingdom Hearts II, Passion and Sanctuary. Originally, Utada's music had a heavy R&B style to it, but now her music has
progressed to a more pop / experimental tone. Her R&B sound was what brought her so much attention with her first release
in Japan, Automatic / time will tell, as there were no other artists with her distinct style. Utada was originally married
to director Kiriya Kazuaki, who directed the movie CASSHERN, however in March 2007 the couple split. Currently in Japan she
has album sales totaling 24 million copies, singles sales of 15.1 million copies and VHS/DVD sales estimated 3 million copies
sold.
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