My physical copies of A Best and Five arrived in the mail today, LOVE and Love Songs should arrive mid-February. I'm going to import A Best 2 (both of them) or A Complete: All Singles next, then my favorite albums in order of favorite to least.
moshi mo kimi ga fukai kanashimi ni deattara
boku ni mo waketekureru to ii na
sono egao no tame nara nan datte dekiru darou
boku no taisetsu na takaramono
boku no taisetsu na takaramono
But really only Utada has a real "hit" thread apart from the general J-pop thread, and she has the benefit of Kingdom Hearts for Western exposure, so the success this thread has had is actually a bit surprising!
She's absolutely amazing, and the whole of her career is absolutely fantastic.
Empress of Pop.
I discovered her by happenstance on youtube in 2006 while watching an anime music video. The song playing in the video was Ayumi's STEP you, and I damn loved the song. After the anime music video I looked up the song, and watched Ayumi's music video for STEP you, and loved it, too. And that was the beginning of it all. I started listening to all of her music, and loving 90% of it and her wonderful singing, watching her performance and loving 90% of them also. It was great.