Nanase Aikawa's bio

Personal Statistics

~Hair: Varies (Brown/Pink, currently)
~Eyes: Brown
~Favourite Pet: Cat
~Favourite Time of Day: Night

Information

Nanase Aikawa (相川七瀬, Aikawa Nanase?) is a Japanese musician. While she does have her fair share of soft songs (such as "Dandelion" and "The Last Quarter"), and fun songs ("Break Out", "Cosmic Love"), a good portion of her collection (and, indeed, the majority of her most popular songs) fall firmly under the rock category. She publishes her music under the Motorod label, a division of Avex Group

History

Nanase Aikawa (her real name is rumoured to be Misa Saeki (佐伯みさ, Misa Saeki?)), was born on February 16, 1975, in Osaka, Japan. Her parents divorced when she was young, which affected her significantly enough for her to develop into a bit of a troublemaker (which also happens to be the title of one of her singles.) It is also rumoured that she was in a girl gang in her young teenage years, and may even have been its leader. Another story has it that she was severely bullied by classmates, giving rise to nightmares, making her skip an entire year of school. Throughout her school years, Nanase had been singing and participating in a few singing competitions, which routinely passed her over, but brought her to the attention of a well-known music producer Tetsuro Oda. At the age of 15, she dropped out of school to be trained by Mr. Oda. Details of her life during these years are sketchy. Five years later, at the age of 20, she released her first single, Yumemiru Shoujo jairarenai on 8 November 1995

Personality

Nanase is an intensely private person. Very little is known about her personal life except for the bits and pieces she feels confident enough to announce. For instance, on 16 February 2001, a great many of her male fans were heartbroken when she publicly announced that she had gotten married that very day. She published this, and the fact that she was already three-months pregnant, on her official website. Nothing else about her relationship was known until the birth of her son on 6 September 2001. She is "polite, but seldom enthusiastic" in interviews, although she frequently leaves hand-written messages on her website

Career

The cover for the album "Red" and the CD from the album.After she released her first single on 8 November 1995, she released three more singles, and then her first full album Red in 1996, which sold more than two million copies in its first month. That album won her an invitation to perform on Kōhaku Uta Gassen, a New Year's Eve singing contest between male and female teams of popular singers sponsored by NHK (one of Japan's television networks).

Since then, she has released about one album each year, plus an average of three mini- or maxi-singles. Her second album, Paradox, was released in July of 1997, selling 1.8 million copies, coinciding with her first concert tour Live Emotion '97 (consisting of 20 concert dates, and attracting a total of 65,000 fans, according to Avex).

July of 1998 saw her third album Crimson, and another concert tour with over 40 concert dates. Her 1999 release, I.D. was a compilation album, but it debuted at number one on the rock chart, her fourth consecutive album to be released at the number one slot.

In 2001, she also released a 'mini-album' (sometime between a full album and a single) with only 7 tracks called the Last Quarter of uncharacteristically soft ballad-style music, recorded during her later months of pregnancy.

It wasn't until 2003 that she released another album, despite being another compilation album, called ID: 2.

At the 11th Annual Japan Gold Disc Awards, Nanase's album Red was voted the Best Album (Japanese Rock and Folk music, female vocalist category). Her album Paradox was also voted Best Album of the Year at the 12th Annual Japan Gold Disc Awards. of the

As of August of 2004, Nanase Aikawa has released six albums, plus two compilation albums and the mini-album, a total of 24 singles, and no less than three separate concerts and two music video collections on video and DVD.

In February of 2004, three years since her last original album and many singles, she released 7 Seven. An album devoted to feelings relating to music and color, with each song dedicated to a certain color. Since then she has released 4 more singles.

A year later, in February of 2005, she released The First Quarter mini-album. This album focused more on ballads and soft music than her well-known rock edge. To no surprise, in November of that same year, she released the highly anticipated R.U.O.K?! mini-album, with seven songs with a distinct rock sound. She also has a list of very famous heavy metal rock musicians and Visual Kei band members contributing to the album, as well as touring with her.

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