Yui

Yoshioka Yui attained prominence across Japan through a trajectory that, while easy to summarize, demanded exceptional persistence and could readily form the basis of a manga series or feature film. At sixteen the music-obsessed daughter of a single-parent household accepted a classmate’s suggestion and left ordinary secondary education for a specialized private academy in Fukuoka. There she cultivated both performance technique and songwriting ability, transporting her guitar on every outing and busking publicly, an activity that gradually dispelled her earlier timidity. That shyness had clearly receded by 2003, when she entered a Sony Music audition and prevailed over twenty thousand rivals to obtain a recording deal. The agreement produced her lone indie release, the 2004 single “It’s a Happy Line.” Its A-side reached the director of the prime-time drama Fukigen Na Gene (Grumpy Gene), who incorporated the track into the series, thereby securing Yui a position on Sony’s flagship roster.

Despite composing every song herself, she matched the commercial results normally enjoyed by conventional pop acts who interpret outside material. Her first major-label single, “Feel My Soul,” also featured in Fukigen Na Gene, moved one hundred thousand copies; the 2006 debut album From Me to You doubled that figure and entered the Oricon chart at number four. The same year she launched an acting career in the lead role of Taiyou No Uta (Midnight Sun), a romantic drama centered on a young musician whose terminal condition forbids sunlight; the film screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Two further compositions were selected for the opening and closing sequences of the popular anime Bleach, after which her second album, Can’t Buy My Love, topped the Oricon ranking in 2007 with five hundred thousand units sold. Subsequent contributions appeared in another television drama and two motion pictures, while a sold-out concert at Budokan confirmed her arena status. April 2008 saw the arrival of her third album, I Loved Yesterday; November brought the B-side collection My Short Stories, the first such compilation to debut at number one on the Oricon chart.