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Yaida Hitomi
Yaida Hitomi
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Yaida Hitomi has been scoring on the Japanese scene since the start of the 2000s, winning the adoration of teenagers and romantically-minded adults with her sweet folkish guitar pop that she herself dubs 䀘heart rock'. She bought a cheap guitar with her own money at the age of 19, and by 22 she was handling the instrument well enough to have her first EP Howling (2000) sell more than 10,000 copies, despite being released on a small independent label. After that Yaida was picked by Toshiba-EMI (who had to battle other big companies to sign her), and, curiously, started her major label career by going to England. A small club tour under the name of Yaiko earned her a certain UK fanbase, but it was in Japan where the real success waited for her. After two successful singles her first album, Daiya-monde (2000), written by Yaida herself, just like all her subsequent records, shot to #1 on the Oricon charts. Despite being hospitalized with exhaustion, in next year she managed to graduate from Kansai University (with a degree in French literature, no less), play UK and Japan tours and record her second LP, Candlize (2001), that started on top of the charts as well and even got platinum. Two more successful albums (i/flancy, 2002, platinum as well, and Air/Cook/Sky, 2003) followed, as well as some heavy touring that included gigs in Yokohama and Osaka domes. In 2005, she was also one of the first artists to play Japanese MTV Unplugged -- to such success that an acoustic tour followed. On the same year Yaida Hitomi also played at the nation's most important venue, Budokan, in Tokyo, promoting her 5th album Here Today -- Gone Tomorrow. She continued her hard-working streak in 2006, releasing another LP, It's A New Day, before taking a break from recording, ending it in 2008 with her seventh album, Colorhythm. Strangely enough, during all that time Yaida Hitomi never worked with the movie and anime industries like many other J-pop artists, although she provided a number of songs for TV commercials. ~ Alexey Eremenko, All Music GuideMore

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