Who the hell is?

Utada

Utada

Big in Japan: It could be the plot for a teen flick. A mysterious Japanese girl arrives at Columbia University to begin her freshman year. She seems like any ordinary student, but Hikaru Utada hides a huge secret. Unbeknownst to her classmates, Hikaru is a massive pop star in Japan, as big as Britney Spears in the East, although not quite as raunchy. Her anonymity is short-lived, however, and her classmates soon discover that there is a multi-million-selling pop star in their midst. In Japan, Hikaru can't move without being mobbed by devoted fans; in the US, she remains completely unknown, but she's hoping all that will change when she launches her career in the West. Still only 21, and with 20 million record sales behind her, Hikaru has time and money on her side. If all goes according to plan, she won't be able to go anywhere iunrecognised.

Big Yen: Born in New York to Japanese parents, Hikaru was exposed to music from an early age; mom was a singer and dad was a musician and producer. Her earliest memories were of snoozing under the speakers at the studio where her parents worked, and her earliest musical efforts came when she was just 11. By the time she was 13, Hikaru had written and recorded an entire album, and had clocked up a huge number of air miles travelling between New York and Tokyo with her parents. A Tokyo producer asked her to write an album in Japanese, and the result sold 9 million copies, making Hikaru a massive star at just 16. Nissan used one of her songs in an ad campaign, and another of her songs became the theme tune for a top-rated Japanese television series.

Exact science: With his experience in the music biz, Hikaru's dad was the obvious choice to run her management company, while her mother, a former enka (Japanese ballad) singer, is able to give her daughter advice on how to cope with the pressures of fame. Her mother retired at an early age, breaking many a fan's heart, and Hikaru intends to do the same before she turns 30, and perhaps follow a career in neuroscience.

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She's Your Man: The recent single, You Make Me Want To Be A Man, was Hikaru's opening salvo in her assault on the Western pop market. The album, Exodus, featuring production work by Timbaland, is out now. In a country where girlie pop stars all sing like lickle baby dolls, Hikaru's more mature tones, influenced by everyone from Metallica to Lauryn Hill, set her apart from the cartoon pop masses. She's covered U2's With or Without You, and lists Björk, Garbage, Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix among her favourite artists. "Sometimes I'm as pop as The Police, sometimes as fierce as The Mars Volta," she says, "and I always, always enjoy being humourous and seductive."

Kevin Courtney