Utada Hikaru

, who also goes by the mononym Utada , is a Japanese American singer and songwriter. After releasing the commercially unsuccessful English-language album Precious under the stage name "Cubic U" in 1998, she rose to prominence in 1999 with the release of her second album, First Love, which sold over eight million copies in Japan and became the best selling Japanese-language album of all time. She was described by Time Magazine as a "Diva On Campus", a reference to her having attended Columbia University for a brief, career-break semester in 2000.