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Utada Hikaru was the first J-pop artist I ever got into, and even now, I find little fault in her independence as an artist, her style choices, and the direction that she has taken in the past few years. She tops my most listened artists list for good reason, and that's because she's one of the few J-pop artists out there whose focus is not on her image but on the genuine nature of her music.

The first song I listened of hers was in 2002 when Kingdom Hearts came out. That song was Simple And Clean. At first, I didn't think much of her voice (it didn't seem strong at the high notes) or her lyrics for the song (feeling simple and clean? lyrics about turning off a TV and meeting her father? weird...), so I didn't think much of it. Later, I read an article about her in TIME magazine about how she was going to Columbia and had already popular in Japan at the time. I found the article rather interesting, and hoped for a good crossover with her English album, though I didn't listen to it. …