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Namie Amuro is a Japanese former recording artist, producer, dancer, model, actress, and entrepreneur who was active between 1992 and 2018. A leading figure in the Japanese entertainment industry since the early 1990s, Amuro is known for breaking the youthful idol stereotype of J-Pop, changing the fashion trends and lifestyle of women in Japan, her experimentation across music styles, and for her visual imagery in music videos and live performances. Due to her career longevity, resilience, professionalism, efforts behind-the-scenes in the music industry, and her way of life, she is considered a pop culture icon in Japan and Asia. She has been referred to as the "Diva of the Heisei Era" and the "Queen of Japanese Pop", and has been recognized as having the influence and career impact domestically equivalent to artists such as Janet Jackson and Madonna in Western music and pop culture.
Born in Naha, Okinawa, Japan, Amuro debuted as the lead singer of the idol group Super Monkeys when she was 14 years old. Despite early sales disappointments, she ventured into modeling and acting, attracting domestic attention with the group's best-selling single "Try Me (Watashi o Shinjite)". She signed to Avex Trax in 1995 and debuted as a solo artist with the single "Body Feels Exit". Her 1996 studio album, Sweet 19 Blues, sold over 3 million copies, setting the record at the time for the biggest-selling album by a female artist in Japan and the highest-selling album debut in the world. One of the singles from her album Concentration 20 (1997), "Can You Celebrate?", is the best-selling single by a solo female artist in Japanese music history. From 1999, Amuro partnered with international musicians and producers on her records, beginning with Genius 2000 (2000).
In the early 2000s, Amuro's music evolved from pop to R&B, and she saw a decline in sales. Play (2007), her eighth studio album, began the period of commercial resurgence. She continued to experiment musically, moving to electronic dance music and English language songs with follow-up records Uncontrolled (2012) and Feel (2013). She subsequently released her eleventh studio album Genic (2015) and her last compilation album Finally (2017), which contains re-recordings of her selected singles from 1992 to 2017.
Amuro is noted within the Japanese entertainment industry for "producing" and managing her own career. Aside from music, she has appeared in various advertisement campaigns in Japan and founded her own management company Stella88, and her own record label Dimension Point.
Having sold more than 40 million records, Amuro is recognized as one of the best-selling artists in Japan by Oricon. Since her solo debut, she achieved top 10 singles for 23 consecutive years (#1 for solo artists). All of her albums are certified Platinum, and her debut solo album, Sweet 19 Blues, was the best-selling album in Japan. She is the only artist in Japan to sell a million albums in her teens, 20s, 30s, and 40s. Her last album, Finally, topped the year-end album charts of both Oricon and Billboard Japan for two consecutive years (the first and only artist in the Japanese Music Industry to do so). Amuro has frequently been noted for her live performances at music award ceremonies and is the recipient of the World Music Awards, Japan Record Awards, Japan Gold Disc Awards, and MTV Video Music Awards Japan, among many others.
On September 16, 2018, Amuro officially retired from the music and entertainment business.
