Ayumi Hamasaki

No superlative seems too great in describing the success achieved by singer, songwriter, and pop icon Ayumi Hamasaki. The best-selling solo artist in Japan, she has sold millions of records and claimed a bevy of top-league Japanese chart records since she debuted in the late 1990s with A Song for XX. Delivering full-lengths, EPs, and singles at breakneck speed -- often with two LPs arriving in a calendar year -- she dominated the charts throughout the early 2000s with turn-of-the-millennium classics like Loveppears (1999), Duty (2000), and I Am... (2002). As she gained more co...