Nanase Aikawa

Stage Name:Nanase Aikawa 相川 七瀬 (Aikawa Nanase)
Birth name 佐伯みさ (佐伯美咲 Saeki Misa)
Born February 16, 1975
Origin Osaka, Japan
Genre(s) Japanese rock/pop
Occupation(s) Singer
Years active 1995-present
Label(s) Avex Trax
Website http://www.nanase.jp/

Nanase Aikawa (相川 七瀬 ,Aikawa Nanase) (born February 16, 1975) is a semi-retired Japanese musician known for employing a variety of musical styles, most notably rock. She publishes her music under the Motorod label, a division of Avex Group.

Early life

Nanase Aikawa was born on February 16, 1975, in Osaka, Japan. Throughout her school years, Nanase had sung and participated in a several singing competitions, which 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 Oda. At the age of 20 she released her first single, Yume Miru Shoujo ja Irarenai on 8 November 1995.

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 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).

"Koigokoro" (1996)
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35 second sample of Nanase Aikawa's song "Koigokoro"
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July 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.

Some music-journalists said that a large part of her fan base, during the 1990s, was the Bosozoku (motorcycle gang) youthes especially those in the western areas of Japan.

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, another compilation, called ID: 2.

"China Rose" (1999)
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30 second sample of Nanase Aikawa's song "China Rose" from her album,"Foxtrot".
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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.

In February 2004, three years after 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 four more singles.

In 2004, her song BYE BYE was covered by UK singer Jennifer Ellison as "Bye Bye Boy", and Swedish girl group Play as "Girls Can Too".

As of August 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.

A year later, in February 2005, she released The First Quarter mini-album. This album focused more on ballads and soft music than her well-known rock edge. In November of that same year she released R.U.O.K?!, a mini-album with seven songs. In July 2007, Nanase Aikawa began work on her new album.

Her first music release while working on this album is as part of a limited unit called "Crimson-FANG" for the soundtrack of Kamen Rider Kiva: King of the Castle in the Demon World, having performed on the soundtrack on Kamen Rider Blade in 2004. The single for, "Circle of Life", is to be released on August 6, 2008.

Subsequently, Aikawa released her first digital single off her new album Reborn entitled Prism. Which was released May 24, 2008.