She was born into a musical family, her father a well-known music producer, and her mother was a singer who was popular in the 70s.
She debuted at the age of 15 and sold 9.9 million copies on her debut album, which still holds the highest sales in Japan.
Her second album was released on the same day as Ayumi Hamasaki's debut collection, both breaking into the top 10 of the Japanese sales charts, and the album's first week sales held the world record for more than a decade until it was broken by Adele's "25".
At the peak of her career, she announced her retirement, bid farewell to the music scene for five years, and successively experienced the death of her mother and the birth of her own child, becoming an ordinary mother who records the growth of her children every day in the eyes of the world.
In 2016, she released her eight-and-a-half-year comeback album, which air-landed to the top of the sales charts, and two years later, her seventh album also won the first week.
In 2021, she wrote the theme song for "Evangelion Theater Edition" for the fourth time, which once again became the hottest topic, and the film also grossed 3.3 billion yen in its first week of release.
At this time, it has been 23 years since her debut. She is - Utada Hikaru.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" > debut is the peak</h1>
From the first theatrical version of EVA to the latest game, the theme songs of the four theatrical versions were all arranged by Hikaru Utada.
How did this legendary partnership begin? What does the EVA anime mean to Hikaru Utada? If we want to clarify the bond between Hikari Utada and EVA, perhaps we should turn the time back to the moment of her birth.
On January 19, 1983, Terumi Utada and Keiko Fuji, who lived in New York, gave birth to their daughter, and the couple gave her a simple but beautiful name: light. In 1990, his parents formed a small family orchestra for Hikaru Utada and released an album in a decent way. Her parents naturally became her musical initiation, and becoming a singer seemed to be a fateful thing that had already planted seeds.
Hikaru Utada and her big bear once wrote a children's song about bears. Because of his fanatical preference for bears, he was nicknamed "Bear Light"
Almost all of Utada's early works were in English, although it can be seen that there are many musical talents, but after all, they are all testing the nature of the water, and the sales are not too good. It wasn't until 1998 that Akira Miyake, the music producer of Toshiba EMI, approached Hikaru Utada and asked her to sign emi and debut as a Song in Japanese.
Naturally, her musical talent is on the one hand, but Miyake certainly has business considerations, with the help of her parents' fame and commercial packaging, signing Utada Hikaru is at least a stable business. At the end of the same year, Utada released two of her true debut singles, "Automatic/time will tell".
Although there has been a lot of discussion about parenthood, "Automatic/time will tell" can only be described as tepid in the early days of its release. It wasn't until 1999 that the two songs suddenly— as if they had undergone an indispensable fermentation period— caught fire. The debut single of the 15-year-old genius daughter of a well-known musician couple has countless discussions on every element, and this single album has sold more than 2 million copies, which is undoubtedly an astronomical number even at the time of the golden age of the record.
After releasing her second single "Movin'on without you", Hikaru Utada released her first full album , First Love , a name destined to go down in the annals of pop music , which sold 2 million copies in its first week and then sold 7.65 million copies, still maintaining a Record for Japanese record sales. Worldwide, the album sold 9.9 million copies, for comparison, the Beatles' Abbey Road sold only 14.4 million copies.
Cover of the debut album "First Love" and the debut 20th anniversary album "First Love"
On March 28, 2001, Hikaru Utada released her second album Distance, at this time, she was no longer the "daughter of singer Keiko Fuji", but instead made Keiko Fujinko the "mother of singer Hikaru Uta", at this time, in addition to the expectations of the crowd, of course, she also became the target of competitors.
Hikaru Utada was naturally not the only singer who debuted at the end of the 20th century, in that last golden age of the recording industry, there were several diva-level singers who appeared before and after, including Utada Hikaru, and Hamasaki Bu, who had to be mentioned. Ayumi Hamasaki, who also debuted as a member of the 98th generation, also achieved unprecedented success in the last years of the 20th century, and she herself became the new trend icon in Tokyo after Namie Amuro.
Even if it wasn't Hamasaki's intentions, her company Ai Hui, in order to block Hikaru Utada's second album Distance, also adjusted the release date of Hamasaki's debut collection "A BEST" to March 28, 2001, a sales battle between the two hottest singers of the millennium, which is often mentioned today as the "light step war".
《Distance》与《A BEST》
In the post-record era, it may be difficult for us to appreciate the scene at that time, the album posters of Hikari Utada and Hamasaki bugus occupied the major billboards in Shibuya, the record store specially opened the two singers' respective record checkout areas, the fans in and out of the queue were leaking inside and out, and the record assembly line was full of horsepower, mobilizing all the production lines to produce "Distance" and "A BEST".
The "light step war" is not so much a popular showdown between singers as it is a conspiracy of two brokerage companies. In the end, "Distance" achieved more than 3 million first-week sales, "A BEST" also achieved 2.87 million first-week sales, and the final sales of both albums both entered the top ten in Japanese history.
Such achievements and exposure also greatly overdrawn Utada Hikaru's energy, and seem to lay the groundwork for her subsequent retirement. And her family, behind the scenes that people can't see, quietly ignited the lead of contradiction.
But fortunately, EVA also entered the life of Hikaru Utada at this time.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" > encounter with EVA</h1>
There are too many parts that overlap with yourself, and even a little mentally polluted.
As is common in celebrity marriages, the relationship between Terumi Utada and Keiko Fuji has not been normal, they have experienced 7 divorces and remarriages since their marriage in 1982, the most extreme one is even only two weeks apart, such a sensitive relationship between husband and wife has not improved after Utada Hikaru was born.
Under the unstable emotional problems, her mother Fuji Keiko began to become addicted to gambling, and she once spent more than 500 million yen on casinos, which made the relationship between her parents worse. In 2007, Terumi Utada and Keiko Fuji divorced for the last time, and since then they have completely severed their relationship. After another six years, her spirit fell into a breakdown, and Keiko Fuji, who was unable to extricate herself in reality and fantasy, committed suicide by jumping off a building in Shinjuku.
A monument erected by musicians in honor of Keiko Fuji
For Hikaru Utada, her parents' constant divorce and remarriage accompanied her through almost the entire process of growing up. And the mother's mental problems inevitably become the "shadow" behind the "light". On the other hand, she debuted as a talented girl at the age of 15, and she did not even enjoy the youth and confusion that a young girl should have, so she involuntarily became involved in the giant machine of the record industry, and "becoming the most dazzling singer" seemed to be an inevitable fate, which was decided at her birth.
Probably because I always wanted to escape, I always wanted to disappear from the world I was in. From debuting at the age of 15 to becoming a world-renowned person, things I didn't expect were imposed on me, and people around me thought I was lucky, but for me, it was more like a cross that I couldn't take.
Hikaru Utada began to find solace in the world of animation and fantasy, and she and Evangelion became acquainted at this moment. In 2002, 19-year-old Hikaru Utada married photographer Kazuaki Kiritani, fifteen years her senior, and Kiriya introduced her to EVA in addition to her brief comfort. Hikaru Utada was instantly attracted and watched all the episodes in one sitting. Even if she divorced Kiriya 5 years later, it did not affect her love for EVA in the slightest.
Utada Mitsunori Unavoidable Land Ging-Ying-yo-yo-so,"Japanese self-polymerization part ta-ta-ryo,Very much point mental staining. "(Weekly Playboy 2006.6/5, Vol. 23)"Evangelion 10th Year Truth", Shueisha)
Having been given an unsurpassable mission as a teenager, with a father who symbolizes unspeakable power and a mother who is missing in his growth, the urgency to escape from all this at all times seems to be that in an instant, Utada finds his reflection in Shinji.
In 2007, Hikaru Utada's parents and herself divorced, but as if in compensation for parting, she was invited to write the theme song for Evangelion Theater Edition: Prologue. In the end, "Beautiful World", released in the year of parting, but from beginning to end, described the feeling of longing for another person, became a new symbol of EVA, and also began the 14-year connection between Hikari Utada and EVA.
Talking about the creation of this song, Hikaru Utada said, "It's really hard to survive. That's why there is always a need for something to rely on for our lives, and that's how I wrote Beautiful World. No matter what kind of difficult place, what kind of difficult moment, as long as there are people who miss deeply, we can endure it. ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" > Uta Hikaru's Song of Love and Death</h1>
But for me, she was a mother who was more gentle than anyone else, always smiling at me, and meeting her was the most thankful thing for me.
Seemingly unexpected, but reasonable, in 2010, Hikaru Utada issued a declaration of "Human Activities", saying that from 2011 onwards, he would terminate his acting activities and "restart his life as an ordinary person".
She held a farewell performance called "Wild Life" at Arena in Yokohama, opened personal accounts on Twitter and YouTube, and then stopped her acting activities and became an "influencer" who shared her daily life.
The only exception was still dedicated to EVA, and at the end of 2012, with almost no signs or prior publicity, Hikaru Utada released his new single "桜流し" online as the theme song for Evangelion New Theater Edition: Q.
2010 "Wild Life" farewell concert
Evangelion New Theatrical Edition: Q is the third theatrical version of EVA, and for the first two theatrical editions that used Beautiful World and its Remix editions, Q returning with a new theme song is a new milestone for both EVA and Utada.
Slightly different from the idea of "Beautiful World", in "桜流し", Utada uses her usual simple and repetitive lyrics to talk about the belief of living alone after losing the most important existence.
Although she had already obtained the script beforehand, because she hated spoilers, Utada wrote the song without knowing the plot of the new theatrical version, and Hideaki Anno once told her, "Don't care about the plot of the anime, please describe your current mood." So the song "桜流し" is actually more affected by the 2011 March 11 earthquake, but perhaps because of this, it "collided" with EVA in its interpretation of the disaster.
But fate seemed to be playing a joke on her, and just the year after the release of the new song, one of the most important beings for Hikaru Utada, her mother Keiko Fuji suddenly passed away.
"On the morning of August 22, my mother ended her life. Because all kinds of speculation are coming, allow me to explain a little bit. ”
In Hikaru Utada's explanation, her mother had long-term mental distress, a strong sense of distrust and delusion of persecution toward her family, and eventually had such an out-of-control result.
"Maybe this is a relief for her, she is a woman who has attracted a lot of misunderstandings, but for me, she is a mother who is more gentle than anyone, always smiling at me, and meeting her is the most thankful thing for me." 」
Mother Keiko Fuji and Hikaru Utada
It seems to be heaven's compensation for Hikaru Utada, who lost her mother, and in 2014, she married her boyfriend of Italian descent and had a child of her own the following year.
At this time, Utada Hikaru experienced the comfort brought to her by ordinary and everyday life, in addition to sharing her children's growth anecdotes on social networking sites, but also because she often shared untimely objects found by chance, she won the title of "garbage picker singer".
The little dolls she stumbled upon on the road reminded Utada of herself, who felt that she was also forced to be placed in an inappropriate place, and that she had allowed herself to hide in the world of anime in order to escape this sense of obedience, but now she had a new and most important existence - her own child.
Hikaru Utada also seemed to have the courage to re-enter the battlefield.
On January 20, 2016, just one day after her 33rd birthday, Utada's official website released the news that she would create a new theme song for the morning drama "Sister in Charge" and the news program "NEWS ZERO" as the beginning of her comeback. On September 28, Hikaru Utada released his sixth studio album, Fantôme, eight and a half years apart, with the title taken from the French word "phantom" and the theme apparently accompanied by Utada's "love" and "death" during those years.
After the release of "Q", Hideaki Anno first fell into a state of depression, and then because of the difficulty of progressing because of the takeover of "New Godzilla", EVA's sequel became more and more distant.
From the ending trailer for 2012's Q, Evangelion New Theater Edition: ? At the beginning, this sequel to the final chapter, which only heard its name, was postponed in a constant delay and apology, and "in the effort, in the production" has become a word that has long been heard by EVA fans.
Until the release of "Future future" in 2018, EVA unbanned the special newspaper before the screening, announcing that the new work will be released in 2020, followed by a series of intensive publicity, and in 2019, EVA released the second special report on the pre-screening trailer of "Weather Child", "The release date is June 27, 2020." ”
However, in the upcoming 2020, the well-known thing happened, all theatrical works were announced to be postponed, and naturally no one blamed EVA at this time. Until the release of the theatrical version of "Devil's Blade" at the end of the year, EVA previewed the third special report in the patch, until March 8, 2021, the final chapter of the EVA theatrical version that violated the 9 years, finally appeared on the Japanese theater screen.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" > cycle of repetition – another encounter with EVA</h1>
"EVA is a repetitive work, a story that is afraid of contact with ambiguous others, but yearns for contact." Hideaki Anno once said so.
As the finale of EVA, "New Evangelion Theater Edition: The End" is not so much the end of EVA as a summary of the entire EVA, and Hikaru Utada, who once again wrote the theme song. It seems that she is also using "One Last Kiss" to write a summary of her life as a singer for the past 23 years, in this song, Utada Hikaru is intertwined with EVA and With Shinji Tsuru, who resonates with her.
If you pay attention to the lyrics at the beginning of One Last Kiss, you will notice that she deliberately uses the rhyme of the front and back thimbles:
The ruble of (ha) is (wa)
It was not (na) (ta)/wa (wa)
Wa(wa) The Mona Lisa (za)
Have you already met (ka)/et al.(ra)
I saw you (ha) at a glance (ta)
(a) the day-moving roundma (ma)
a hunch of unstoppable loss
(There are also plenty of shots with the concept of looping implied in the MV title of One Last Kiss.)
This method of rhyming each other at the beginning and end of the sentence is obviously a symbol of repetition, and even excluding some scholars' divergent interpretations, the concept of "cyclical reciprocation" has long been a label in Hikaru Utada's work, even dating back to her early Deep River (2002).
Cover photo of Deep River
As Utada's third studio album and the song of the same name, Deep River is based on Shusaku Endo's novel Deep River, which tells the story of a group of people who have experienced a very different experience on their journey to the Ganges in India in search of spiritual solutions, and Endo connects sentient beings in the context of modern Japan with the ganges with religious meanings.
Even with an inevitable touch of orientalism, the interweaving of Hinduism, Shintoism, and Christianity throughout the work points to a view of life and death that transcends the boundaries between nationality and religion.
Shusaku Endo", "Deep River"
In the lyrics of "Deep River", Hikaru Utada compares the relationship between people to a river that incorporates all human emotions, love and hate, life and death, flows to the endless sea, is evaporated and purified, and begins the next journey in a cyclical manner. In "One Last Kiss", although it is also the theme of "cycle back and forth", Utada focuses on a moment in the process, staying on a moment of love and a moment of kiss.
This "moment in the rotation of the huge gear" has also unexpectedly become a commentary on the entire series of EVA.
In order to implement the "Human Completion Plan" and trying to obliterate all individuality, the ultimate goal is to meet his wife again, and even if he knows that Ling Boli can be infinitely recreated, Ling Zhenji still regards the Li in front of him as the only individual. Seemingly a series of emotionless, as if the gears of the constant rotation of the "human completion plan", the core of the root is the unique love of each individual. As the theme song, "Beautiful World" and "One Last Kiss" are inadvertently interpreted in a situation that does not know the plot in advance, and properly interpret the theme of EVA.
Perhaps when Hikaru Utada wrote "One Last Kiss," he wasn't thinking about EVA full of metaphors or "Deep River" full of religious symbols, but just his beloved mother, his beloved child, or someone he once loved.
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This article is from the WeChat public account: Animation Academic Boo, author: Palomar
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