Word: utada
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...Utada says the Japanese press sometimes focuses too much on the fact that she was born in America. Explains Utada: "I'm a citizen of both countries. I was never that conscious of my nationality growing up." She remembers one incident in middle school when she was asked to declare her nationality for her entry in a school yearbook. "The yearbook staff came to ask me what I wanted to be put down as. I said, 'I don't know. Does nationality refer to what you are racially, or is it where you were born? Or where you grew...