Diva on Campus

Utada Hikaru has a hidden life. She appears to be an ordinary American college student. Starting in the fall of 2000, she attended classes by day, hung out with friends by night and, like most of her fellow Columbia University freshmen, she hadn’t settled on a major yet. But there were rumors about her among the students during orientation week at the Ivy League school on New York City’s Upper West Sidestories that were hard to believe. “Most of my friends know the truth,” says Utada. “Even before the first day of school, I was talking to this friend who was going to Columbia also, and he told me, ‘People all know you’re coming.’ And I go, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Well, all the Asian kids know, but even the non-Asian students have heard something about the Japanese Britney Spears coming to their school.'”

She’s virtually unknown in the U.S. but Americans are starting to find out what her Japanese fans already recognize: that Utada, 18, is one of the best and brightest young pop stars in the world. The Japanese media, of course, routinely sing her praises: “BILINGUAL STRAIGHT-A STUDENT” and “THE DIVA OF THE HEISEI PERIOD!” And the Japanese public devours her music: her debut CD, First Love (1999), sold more than 9.5 million copies, making it the best-selling album in Japanese history. Her latest CD, Distance, has also become a huge hit, with fans buying more than 3 million copies in the first week after its release.

While other Japanese pop divas are content to sing throwaway tunes in baby-girl tones, Utada, who says that growing up she used to go to sleep to Metallica and wake up to Pearl Jam, performs songs that draw from R. and B., rap and even rock. During an MTV Unplugged concert this summer, she surprised fans with a rendition of the Irish rock band U2’s song With or Without You. Except for such occasional covers, Utada writes almost all her own material, combining light melodies and strong grooves. Her lyrics, though mostly about adolescent angst, can be intriguingly off center. “Our last kiss/ Tasted like cigarettes,” she sings on First Love.

Recently, Utada has started taking charge of her work. “I wasn’t trying to exert that much control over the musical production in the first (album),” she says. “I would write the song and sing it, but then I left much of the arrangement up to my father and the arranger and the producers who were working on it. I’d just go in and like, say, ‘Yeah, I think that’s good. Maybe you can do that.’ Whatever. But, for the second album, I was a lot more involved.”

Although the press has compared Utada to Spears, the two are sharply different. First, there’s the issue of clothes. Unlike Britney, Utada keeps hers on. “I’m not like a gorgeous bombshell or anything like that,” she says modestly. “It was just always my music at the front.” Mobbed in Japan, she relishes anonymity in America. “I can never really enjoy being famous,” she says. “So when I can just take a walk and go grocery shopping in New York, it takes a huge load off my back and I feel great. I feel human again, almost.”

Utada was born in New York City but raised part-time in Tokyo. “When people ask me exactly how much time I spend in each country, I always tell them I have no idea,” she says. “Because my parents have taken me back and forth ever since I was a baby.” Her father, Teruzane Utada, is a producer and musician who now runs her management company. Her mother, Keiko Fuji, was a popular enka (Japanese ballad) singer in the 1970s who broke her fans’ hearts by giving up her career and moving to the U.S. to find a little peace. (“I don’t sing anymore,” is all Fuji says now, smiling.) Utada says she got her own start when she followed her parents into the studio and began to make recordings around age 7. (“No, younger!” shouts her father from nearby.) Like her mother, Utada plans to retire youngas early as 28and perhaps pursue neuroscience. “I kind of see myself in a white coat in a lab, working till late evening in front of test tubes,” she says. It’s hard to imagine that Spears has a similar vision of her future.

Shuttling between the U.S. and Japan hasn’t always been easy. Utada, fluent in both Japanese and English, did face some unexpected language barriers when she first emerged as a star. “In Japan I was using a lot of casual sentence endings when I came out thereand the media and people just immediately reacted to that,” she says. “They were all saying, ‘Oh, she’s so not polite. Look at her, she’s so rude.’ But that wasn’t my intention at all. For a while it was a huge issue. I was thinking, ‘Oh, should I start talking very formal in public? Or should I just continue with this casual way of talking?’ In the end, I began mixing formal and casual lines.” Now Utada’s informal approach has become her signature.

Sitting down in a recording studio in New York City, she radiates virtually no pop-star attitude. She is chatty and open, thoughtful and friendly, and laughs and smiles quite a bit. She does flash a look of annoyance when her father suggests she should do a photo shoot without makeup (Utada would rather look her best for the cameras and get a little touch-up). But she is otherwise completely accommodating. She comes across as a performer who is concerned with her career but not obsessed; a teenager who has left carefree childhood behind but still likes to have a bit of fun.

Utada says the Japanese press sometimes focuses too much on the fact that she was born in America. Explains Utada: “I’m a citizen of both countries. I was never that conscious of my nationality growing up.” She remembers one incident in middle school when she was asked to declare her nationality for her entry in a school yearbook. “The yearbook staff came to ask me what I wanted to be put down as. I said, ‘I don’t know. Does nationality refer to what you are racially, or is it where you were born? Or where you grew up? What is it?’ And everyone’s like, ‘Well, we don’t know.’ So they just ended up putting Japanese/American.” Now, Utada thinks of herself as something of a cultural ambassador for Japan. “I feel my own Japanese side much more when I am in New York than when I’m in Japan. And every time I go to New York for a long period of time and go to Tokyo after that, it makes me sad to see all these Japanese people who aren’t really aware that they’re Japanese. Because everyone’s Japanese (in Japan) you don’t realize that. But when I’m outside of Japan, everywhere I go, I have to be conscious now of what I am. Because it’s embarrassing when you don’t know anything about your own country when you’re out some place.”

Utada enjoys adding traditional Ja-panese touches to her image. Says Utada: “In my most recent artist photo shoot, I said, ‘I want to wear a Japanese summer kimono.’ At first everyone was like, ‘Are you sure?’ Because people don’t really wear it for artist photos. I’ve never really seen a musician wearing it.” But she did it anyway. She’s also taken to wearing traditional Japanese wooden sandals, or geta, with blue jeans.

Even as she embraces Japanese culture, Utada is preparing to tackle the English-speaking market. As a first step, she is taking a temporary leave from school to focus on establishing her career in the U.S. She recently performed a song called Blow My Whistle, which was included on the sound track of the movie Rush Hour 2. Produced by the Neptunes, one of the hottest American hip-hop production duos around, the song features a cameo from gangsta rapper Foxy Brown. Utada said her producers were worried at first that she and Brown might not be a good fit, given their different temperaments and backgrounds. They got along just fine. The idea of having her on the song came from Pharrell (Williams, one-half of the Neptunes), says Utada. “He said Foxy and I would make a very strong combination, the two of us being such contrasting characters: the crazy, revealing, in-your-face Ill Na Na (Foxy’s nickname) and the more settled and slightly mysterious Asian girl.”

The American music industry is ruled by stereotypes: whites rock, blacks rap and croon soul, and few dare to cross the color line. There are hardly any Asian pop acts of prominence in the U.S. (no wonder some see Utada as mysterious). Utada is mounting a challenge to the status quo. On Blow My Whistle, her voice is more resonant than on her Japanese-language songs, and the track boasts beats that are more forceful. She leaves no doubt: she’s got Mary J. Blige, 125th Street-type soul.

There’s another twist. Although she’s been billed on other releases outside Japan as “Utada Hikaru,” the credits on Blow My Whistle bill her as “Hikaru Utada”using the Western custom of listing the surname last. Says Hikaru: “I just figured it’s a good way to separate my English and Japanese personae.” After the interview, she sends a follow-up e-mail that begins, “This is Hikaru Utada. (Or is it Utada Hikaru … oh, whichever!)” She is still a freshman. She’ll work things out.