Hikaru Utada is a Japanese-American singer, songwriter, producer, composer, and arranger. They are known by their stage name Utada (English /uːˈtɑːdə/) in America and Europe. Since the release of their Japanese debut album First Love, which went on to become the best-selling album in Oricon history, Utada has had three of their Japanese studio albums in the list of Top 10 best-selling albums ever in Japan (number 1, 4, 8) and six of their albums (including one English-language and one compilation) charting within the 275 Best-Selling Japanese albums list. Hikaru has had twelve number-one singles on the Oricon Singles chart, with two notable record achievements for a female solo or group artist: five million-sellers and four in the Top 100 All-Time Best-selling Singles. Utada has an estimated more than 52 million records sold worldwide.
Utada is best known in the West for making theme song contributions to Square Enix and Disney's collaborative video game series Kingdom Hearts: "Simple and Clean" (which is the re-written English-language version of their 10th Japanese single Hikari) for Kingdom Hearts, "Sanctuary" for Kingdom Hearts II (later re-recorded with new Japanese lyrics as "Passion" for the Japanese releases of the game), and "Don't Think Twice" for Kingdom Hearts III, in addition to "Face My Fears" alongside longtime Kingdom Hearts fan Skrillex.
