Breaking the boundaries of language and genre, Hikaru Utada finds freedom

Now nearly a quarter-century into their far-reaching career, Hikaru Utada is still finding new ways to express all the facets of the self. The Japanese American pop star, whose 1999 album First Love still holds the honor of being Japan's best selling album of all time, carved out an irreplicable space in the music industry long before it understood how to market artists who eschew the barriers of language, borders and genre.

Since issuing their debut project at age 15 under the moniker Cubic U in 1996, Utada has released eleven adventurous and deeply heartfelt albums that alternate between Japanese and English, and survey everything from R&B and dance pop to experimental electronica and folk. Meanwhile, their fan-favorite pop theme songs for the video game Kingdom Hearts and the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime franchises continue to soundtrack the childhoods of listeners worldwide. Utada's timeless oeuvre is buoyed by their transcendent voice, which always sounds as if it's pulling from a deep well of emotion, always capable of evoking nostalgia at first listen.

Now 39, Utada enters a new era with , their eleventh album released earlier this year. It marks the first time the singer is fully integrating Japanese and English within a single project. "Switching languages definitely allows me to share myself more without the filtering I have to do," Utada explains in a recent call from London, where they now live and work. "I can show a different side of me in English that might sound a bit alarming in Japanese and vice-versa. Then if people want to look into