I saw the album cover before I heard the music

I first knew of her when I heard the orchestrated version of Hikari, I loved the melody and remembered reading about some Japanese pop singer doing the theme so I looked it up and downloaded it. Hikari was actually my first song as opposed to simple and clean...

I remember I was obsessed with FFXs suteki da ne prior to this and was thinking i hoped she was prettier than Rikki. At first I didn't think she was pretty but I loved her music. Changed my mind though...

I remember for a while all I listened to was Hikari, First Love and Miss You (mflo). Then after that all I listened to was utada, seriously didn't even care about other music!

I first heard her in the Kingdom Hearts commercials - she was singing in English (Simple and Clean) so I just assumed she was caucasian, probably a brunette, brown eyes, typical stuff like that. Then I did some research on her and found some of her albums on Lycos Rhapsody, and saw on the album covers that she was Asian.

I first heard her back in the Kingdom Hearts/ Simple and Clean days and of course I thought she'd be a white chick!! I honestly was somewhat shocked when I found out she was from Japan....

But this kinda set me up in a way cause I was like..Wow....Japanese people have amazing voices....but then I started seeing Hikki get constantly compared to Ayumi Hamasaki on the forums...and I thought to myself...."Ok I gotta give this big competitor a listen" and so imagine my surprise when I start up "We Wish" and hear Ayu's voice...Both my little sister and I were like "what the?! She sounds like a squirrel!!" We couldn't believe she was for real! Of course, I quickly realized that this is the common sound of Japanese music and Utada's voice really has an American sound to it (being she was born and partly raised in New York probably)..Also I hope I didn't offend any Ayu fans out there..That was just my ignorant 16 year old opinion at the time..and I became an Ayu fan shortly after!!

Quote:

Squirrel...lol. I was shocked when I heard Ayumi's voice too. I heard her voice off of some TV and looked her up and her wobbly vibrato really annoyed me (it still does).

And Utada did get me into J-Pop too. Before I listened to Utada, I didn't know much about Jpop. I thought that it all sounded like women singing in nasally high pitched voices.

well i didnt know what to think, i mean i thought she would be like all the other asian singers i knew at the time but when i saw her and watched her videos i was like <3_<3 . . .. . simply in love

i love you utada <3<3<3<3