Ayumi Hamasaki is a Japanese singer, songwriter, record producer, actress, model, spokesperson and entrepreneur. Through her entire career, she has written all her lyrical content, and has sometimes composed her music.
Utada Hikaru, who is also known as Hikaru Utada and the mononym Utada, is a Japanese-American singer-songwriter and producer. Born in the United States to Japanese parents, record producer Utada Teruzane and enka singer Keiko Fuji, Utada began to write music and lyrics at an early age and often traveled to Tokyo as a result of Teruzane's job. Eventually, a recording contract with Toshiba-EMI was signed and, under the stage name Cubic U, Utada released an English-language debut album Precious in early 1998, but it was a commercial failure. In the following year, heavily influenced by R&B and dance-pop, a Japanese-language debut First Love was released and became an instant success. Backed by the massive success of singles "Automatic", "Time Will Tell", and "Movin' On Without You", the album sold two million copies in its first week in Japan, topped the Oricon charts for six non-consecutive weeks and went on to sell six million more throughout the rest of 1999. First Love eventually became the country's best-selling album of all time.
Mai Kuraki is a Japanese pop and R&B singer-songwriter and record producer. After releasing her US debut single "Baby I Like" in 1999, Kuraki signed with Giza Studio and released her Japanese debut single "Love, Day After Tomorrow" in 1999. In 2000, she released her debut album, Delicious Way, which debuted at number-one and sold over 2.2 million copies in its first week. The album has spawned four top-three singles, "Love, Day After Tomorrow", "Stay by My Side", "Secret of My Heart", and "Never Gonna Give You Up". Eventually, the album sold over 3.5 million copies nationwide and became the best-selling album in Japan in 2000, and has been the ninth best-selling album in Japan of all-time.
Southern All Stars, also known by the abbreviations Sazan (サザン) and SAS, are a Japanese rock band that first formed in 1974.
Every Little Thing is a pop/soft rock duo from Japan who debuted in August 1996 with the release of their first single called "Feel My Heart". Their name is usually written in English, and only rarely in katakana. They gained massive popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As of 2013, Every Little Thing has sold over 23 million copies of singles and albums throughout Japan. Their second studio album, Time to Destination, is the best-selling album of the band with over 3.5 million copies sold, and became the 10th best-selling album of all time in Japan.
Thriller is the sixth studio album by American singer and songwriter Michael Jackson, released on November 30, 1982, by Epic Records. It was produced by Quincy Jones, who had previously worked with Jackson on his 1979 album Off the Wall. Jackson wanted to create an album where "every song was a killer". With the ongoing backlash against disco, he moved in a new musical direction, resulting in a mix of pop, post-disco, rock, funk, and soul sounds. Thriller foreshadows the contradictory themes of Jackson's personal life, as he began using a motif of paranoia and darker themes. The album features a single guest appearance, with Paul McCartney becoming the first artist to be featured on one of Jackson's albums. Recording took place from April to November 1982 at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles, with a production budget of $750,000.
Distance is the second Japanese album released by Japanese-American singer Utada Hikaru, released on March 28, 2001 in direct "competition" with A Best by Ayumi Hamasaki.
A music download is the digital transfer of music via the Internet into a device capable of decoding and playing it, such as a personal computer, portable media player, MP3 player or smartphone. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyrighted material without permission or legal payment. According to a Nielsen report, downloadable music accounted for 55.9 percent of all music sales in the US in 2012. By the beginning of 2011, Apple's iTunes Store alone made US$1.1 billion of revenue in the first quarter of its fiscal year. Music downloads are typically encoded with modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) audio data compression, particularly the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format used by iTunes as well as the MP3 audio coding format.
Greatest Hits is the eleventh official album release for Elton John, and the first compilation. Released in November 1974, it spans the years 1970 to 1974, compiling ten of John's singles, with one track variation for releases in North America and for Europe and Australia. It topped the album chart in both the United States and the United Kingdom, staying at number one for ten consecutive weeks in the former nation and eleven weeks in the latter. It was the best-selling album of 1975 in the United States, and is his second best-selling album to date, being his first to have received an RIAA diamond certification for US sales of more than 10 million copies – as of April 2016 the album has been certified for 17 million units in the US. It remains John's best-selling album in the U.S. and one of the best-selling albums of all time, with 24 million copies sold worldwide. However, although all of its songs are available as downloads, the album is currently out of print, having been superseded by four other greatest hits releases over the years; The Very Best of Elton John in 1990, Greatest Hits 1970–2002 in 2002, Rocket Man: The Definitive Hits in 2007 and Diamonds in 2017.
Misaki Itō, commonly known as Misia and stylized as MISIA, is a Japanese singer, songwriter, and record producer. Born in Nagasaki, Misia moved to Fukuoka at the age of 14 to pursue a recording career. There, she continued her secondary education and briefly attended Seinan Gakuin University before withdrawing to focus on her musical career. She was signed to BMG Japan in 1997, after auditioning for record producer Haruo Yoda.
Falling into You is the fourth English-language studio album by Canadian singer Celine Dion, released on 11 March 1996 by Columbia/Epic Records. The follow-up to her commercially successful album The Colour of My Love (1993) and French-language D'eux (1995), Falling into You showed a further progression of Dion's music. Throughout the project she collaborated with Jim Steinman, who wrote and produced "It's All Coming Back to Me Now", among others. Several songs were produced by David Foster, including Diane Warren's "Because You Loved Me". In total, Dion worked on the album with fourteen producers and a variety of songwriters and musicians.
Akina Nakamori is a Japanese singer and actress. She is one of the most popular and top selling artists in Japan. Akina achieved national recognition when she won the 1981 season of the talent show Star Tanjō!. Her debut single "Slow Motion" was released to moderate success, peaking at number thirty on the Oricon Weekly Singles Chart. However, Nakamori's popularity increased with the release of her follow-up single, "Shōjo A", which peaked at number five on the Oricon charts and sold over 390,000 copies. Her second album Variation became her first number-one on the Oricon Weekly Albums Chart, staying in that position for three weeks. She made her acting debut in 1985 with an appearance in the Japanese romance movie Ai, Tabidachi. After an extended hiatus from 2010 to 2014, Akina released two compilation album, All Time Best: Original and All Time Best: Utahime Cover, both of which were commercially successful. As of 2011, Akina has sold over 25.3 million records and was named the third best-selling female Japanese idol singer of all-time.
Concentration 20 is the third studio album by Japanese singer Namie Amuro, released July 24, 1997 by Avex Trax. The album's genre is a fusion of styles including pop, dance and rock. Unlike Amuro's previous effort, Sweet 19 Blues, which primarily had lyrics written by Tetsuya Komuro, Concentration 20's lyrics were mostly written by Marc Panther. Komuro did, however, compose and arrange most of the album's songs and wrote the lyrics to three of them.
Billboard Year-End charts are a cumulative measure of a single or album's performance in the United States, based upon the Billboard magazine charts during any given chart year. Billboard's "chart year" runs from the first Billboard "week" of December to the final week in November, but because the Billboard week is dated in advance of publication, the last calendar week for which sales are counted is usually the third week in November. This altered calendar allows for Billboard to calculate year-end charts and release them in time for its final print issue in the last week of December.
The Super Eurobeat Presents Ayu-ro Mix remix album was released by Ayumi Hamasaki on February 16, 2000. The album became the second highest selling remix album in Japan of 2000 with 700,000 copies sold. The album became Hamasaki's longest charting remix album with over 31 weeks on the chart. It is the 4th best selling remix album in Japan and also the 9th best selling remix album worldwide of all time.
Heart Station is the eighth studio and fifth Japanese-language album by Japanese–American recording artist Utada Hikaru. It was released on March 19, 2008 by EMI Music in Japan, and globally on March 26, 2008. It is Utada's eighth consecutive studio album to be fully written and produced by them, with the help of their father Teruzane Utada and long-time collaborator Miyake Akira through the production. Recorded between 2006 and 2008, it was worked on whilst they were recording their ninth studio and second English-language studio album, This Is the One (2009). With the album artwork photographed by Japanese photographer Mitsuo, Heart Station was released in two formats: a physical CD, and as a digital download.
Delicious Way is the debut album by Japanese recording artist Mai Kuraki. It was released by Giza Studio and Giza Inc. in Japan on June 28, 2000. The album was entirely co-written by Kuraki herself, with the help of Michael Africk and Yoko Blaqstone in some tracks, while production was handled by Kanonji. The album's background and development started in mid-to-late 1999 after her American debut single "Baby I Like", where East West Records and Giza Studio sent her back to Japan. To promote the album, four singles were released; "Love, Day After Tomorrow", "Stay by My Side", "Secret of My Heart", and "Never Gonna Give You Up".
Perfect Crime is the second studio album by Japanese recording artist Mai Kuraki. It was released on July 4, 2001, by Giza Studio.
The singles discography of Japanese recording artist Akina Nakamori consists of 50 singles and eight promotional recordings.
The albums discography of Japanese recording artist Akina Nakamori consists of 25 studio albums, 11 compilation albums, 11 cover albums, two live albums, one box set, and six extended plays.
