Word: utada
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...Recently, Utada has started taking charge of her work. "I wasn't trying to exert that much control over the musical production in the first (album)," she says. "I would write the song and sing it, but then I left much of the arrangement up to my father and the arranger and the producers who were working on it. I'd just go in and like, say, 'Yeah, I think that's good. Maybe you can do that.' Whatever. But, for the second album, I was a lot more involved...
...Although the press has compared Utada to Spears, the two are sharply different. First, there's the issue of clothes. Unlike Britney, Utada keeps hers on. "I'm not like a gorgeous bombshell or anything like that," she says modestly. "It was just always my music at the front." Mobbed in Japan, she relishes anonymity in America. "I can never really enjoy being famous," she says. "So when I can just take a walk and go grocery shopping in New York, it takes a huge load off my back and I feel great. I feel human again, almost...
...Utada was born in New York City but raised part-time in Tokyo. "When people ask me exactly how much time I spend in each country, I always tell them I have no idea," she says. "Because my parents have taken me back and forth ever since I was a baby." Her father, Teruzane Utada, is a producer and musician who now runs her management company. Her mother, Keiko Fuji, was a popular enka (Japanese ballad) singer in the 1970s who broke her fans' hearts by giving up her career and moving to the U.S. to find a little peace...
...Shuttling between the U.S. and Japan hasn't always been easy. Utada, fluent in both Japanese and English, did face some unexpected language barriers when she first emerged as a star. "In Japan I was using a lot of casual sentence endings when I came out there?and the media and people just immediately reacted to that," she says. "They were all saying, 'Oh, she's so not polite. Look at her, she's so rude.' But that wasn't my intention at all. For a while it was a huge issue. I was thinking, 'Oh, should I start talking...
...recording studio in New York City, she radiates virtually no pop-star attitude. She is chatty and open, thoughtful and friendly, and laughs and smiles quite a bit. She does flash a look of annoyance when her father suggests she should do a photo shoot without makeup (Utada would rather look her best for the cameras and get a little touch-up). But she is otherwise completely accommodating. She comes across as a performer who is concerned with her career but not obsessed; a teenager who has left carefree childhood behind but still likes to have...