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Hikaru Utada Adds Concert in Japan, Pepsi Ad, Twitter
posted on by Gia Manry
Japanese pop singer Hikaru Utada announced on Tuesday that she will perform her first solo concerts in Japan since 2006. The concerts will take place at the Yokohama Arena on December 8 and 9, coinciding with the 12th anniversary of her debut single "Automatic / time will tell." The singer also announced her appearance in a Pepsi Nex television commercial (her first television commercial in five years), a November 24 release date for her best hits CD Utada Hikaru Single Collection Vol.2, and her own Twitter account.
Utada had announced in August that she will go on an indefinite hiatus in 2011, citing a lack of growth.
Utada is an internationally known, bestselling pop artist born in New York City and raised in Japan and the United States. Her debut album, 1999's First Love, is still Japan's bestselling album ever with about 8 million copies sold. Bandai Visual used Utada's "Kiss & Cry" and "This is Love" songs for the Freedom anime project. Utada also sang the theme songs for the Casshern live-action movie remake and the Hana Yori Dango 2 live-action television adaptation.
More recently, she provided a 2007 remix of her 2000 cover of Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)" for the trailer to Evangelion: 1.0 You Are [Not] Alone (Evangelion Shin Gekijōban: Jo), as well as her "Beautiful World" song for the anime film itself. She also contributed the "Beautiful World -PLANiTb Acoustica Mix-" for the second film, Evangelion: 2.0 You Can [Not] Advance (Evangelion Shin Gekijōban: Ha). In addition to her singing career, she played the heroine Pinoko in the 2001-2002 Black Jack net anime series. She toured the United States and the United Kingdom last year.
Sources: EMI Music: Hikaru Utada via Tokyograph, Oricon
Image © EMI Music Japan
