Posted by quincye93 on 2009/12/7 19:21:31

I first heard Utada through the "Simple and Clean" remix from Kingdom Hearts. I had never seen her, so I imagined her as your typical blonde one-hit-wonder pop starts that came out in the early 2000's. I guessed she was around 17 and wore tight jeans and one of those shirts that stop right above the belly button. Kind of Britney Spears looking.

When I discovered "Sanctuary", the airhead pop star image went away, but I still thought she was blonde XD. When I found out she was Asian I was like oooooh ooook. When I found out she was a huge pop star in Japan and I liked nearly every song of hers I was like :O

It's interesting how new Utada listeners never think she's Asian. Maybe it's because there aren't many (maybe any?) big Asian stars in the English-speaking music industry. I've heard people say they thought she was Swedish or a white American when they heard her KH songs, and others that could have swore she was a black woman when they listened to "Come Back to Me".

Posted by UtadaHikaru124 on 2009/12/7 19:50:15

When I heard her sing Sanctuary im not joking.....i thought she was......BLACK!!lmaoo

Posted by kayoko on 2009/12/7 20:04:51

i thought she was american..never in my mind did i think a japanese singer would sing in english so well..

so i looked into it and came up finding her 'passion' performance from her united tour on youtube..i saw the side of her face and she looked super old..like she was 40 or something..i look on wikipedia and saw she was born in 1983..and i spit the water i was drinking..i was like, ehhhh???~~ supposedly she had the best selling album of all time in japan..

Posted by lolstebbo on 2009/12/7 20:57:37

My first time hearing Utada was also my first time seeing her, but I thought she was some airheaded, and somewhat (censored)ty person from watching the Easy Breezy video.

Posted by LoBFCanti on 2009/12/7 20:58:21

Quote:

Yes.60% of all of Japan as of 2007 owns a copy of First Love.And I thought she'd have better teeth than she has.Honestly,that's about it.

Posted by meanestrage on 2009/12/7 21:21:35

When I first heard her voice I thought she was maddd black. Lol jk jk funny thought though

Posted by yodilit on 2009/12/7 22:24:48

I honestly didn't really put much thought into it!

After first playing Kingdom Hearts, I looked her up. I didn't expect her to be Japanese, but I didn't really have an image of her in my head.

Posted by ramenbox on 2009/12/9 8:16:13

Before I listened to any of her songs I already knew that she's one of the top J-Pop artists so I had this prejudgement that she looks super plastic with those so called kawaii looks. Well, after I listened to Simple & Clean, my thoughts didn't change much. It wasn't until I watched the acoustic version of it. Was so surprised. She's not what I thought at all! Was actually quite shocked. Even more shocking when I watched her other videos. She's not plastic at all!

Posted by Shurikid on 2009/12/9 9:03:41

When I first heard her I got her name along with the song that played (it was either "Sakura Drops" or "Uso Mitaina I Love You"), and I was pretty sure she was Asian right off the start. Thing was, I didn't know Hikaru Utada was the same person who sang "Simple and Clean" in Kingdom Hearts for the longest time; it wasn't until I looked in the credits for the game that I had a huge rude awakening. Somehow, though, I don't think I ever imagined Hikki to be anything but Asian, even when I didn't know it was her singing "Simple and Clean": I knew Kingdom Hearts was a Japanese video game so I was fairly sure the singer of the theme song would be Japanese as well. I just kind of had that motif in my head. I was also really young, so I basically thought that everyone in the world spoke English as a dominant language which was why it didn't seem maligned in my head that a Japanese artist would be singing fluently in English. Somehow, that misconception ended up being the truth, though. That's some precarious logic. x.x

Shuri/Eli

Posted by percypenn on 2009/12/9 10:41:58

i first heard hikaru during her 'automatic' days. i didn't thought about how she might have looked because she's japanese and all. when i saw her on TV, i was pretty amazed about how she looked. very pretty actually.