Sheena Ringo

After quitting school to enter a musical contest, J-Pop singer Sheena Ringo was quickly signed to EMI, then promptly left Japan to avoid the trappings of contract work. After returning, she quickly released a series of singles and albums, all self-penned (a relative rarity for Japanese pop artists), and all meeting with great success on the Japanese charts. A hiatus to start a family followed, itself followed (after a divorce) by both a new album and a new side project, the band Tokyo Jihen. After more success with the band, Sheena returned to a solo career in 2006, quickly taking the number one slot on the Oricon charts with the album Heisei Fuuzoku released in tandem with a major soundtrack project. Following was a B-sides album which peaked quickly at the number one Oricon slot. Despite being involved in the main J-Pop scene, Sheena has created a niche for herself based on a much wider musical range than most artists. Where most pop singers develop a basic sound based on contemporary pop aesthetics and throwaway lyrical matter, Sheena builds on a base of jazz, rock, Motown, and even French chanson equally well (the chanson works especially well with her trademark nasal delivery), infusing her projects with a very different aesthetic, and gaining a fan base separate from the core constituents of the J-Pop apparatus. ~ Adam Greenberg