Deep River

Deep River is the fourth studio album by Japanese-American singer Hikaru Utada. It was released via Toshiba EMI on June 19, 2002. The title of the album, as well as its title track, was inspired by the novel Deep River by Shusaku Endo. Utada wrote and co-produced the majority of the record, and unlike their previous album Distance, they worked primarily with Japanese collaborator Akira Miyake and Teruzane Utada. Musically, Deep River is widely noted by fans and critics as the transition state from Utada's earlier style, R&B, to ethereal pop. Music critics praised Deep River's production and Utada's experimental approach to their sound, and the album and its content received numerous awards and accolades. Commercially, the album attained meteoric success. In Japan, it debuted at number one on the Oricon Albums Chart and was certified triple million by the Recording Industry Association of Japan for selling over three million copies. The album is listed as the eighth highest-selling album in Japanese music history. To promote the album, Utada released four singles: "Final Distance," "Traveling," "Hikari" and "Sakura Drops / Letters." From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Ri...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)