No Rock And Roll Fun

JAPANESE POP: THE SERIOUS ASSAULT: We're usually told that bands who we assume have disappeared and broken up are actually still alive, working away in Japan to still adoring audiences; Shampoo, we're asked to believe, are as big as Will Young in Tokyo. It's become the equivalent of wives telling the neighbours that their husbands are working on the oil rigs instead of doing a five month stretch for aggravated robbery. That said, American and British acts do clock up some extra earnings in Japan, but - a few geeky boys who love the anime apart - there's been precious little transport in the opposite direction. Utada Hikaru wants to change that.



Hikaru isn't the first Japanese pop star to attempt to leap into the US charts, but she does have an advantage in that she was born in New York, and has spent her life swapping between America and Japan. She's also not that dumb - she dropped out of Columbia University because it wasn't challenging enough (this at a time when she was also selling squillions and oodles of records in Japan). Which makes her official biography - all Hello Kitty and Three Amigos - seem a little at odds with her interview persona, where she talks of Poe and Tolstoy. We hope America takes to her; she could be an interesting figure to have around.