Namie Amuro is a Japanese pop singer, produced by Tetsuya Komuro. Namie is TK's biggest sucess, since she essentially defined what teenage Japanese girls would want to look like. There's even a word in Japanese for "looks like Namie Amuro".

Her fashion influence aside, though, she's done some pretty good songs. It's important to note, however, that most of the creativity in her music comes not from her, but from TK. His style tends toward very synth-heavy music, with hop-hop influenced beats and fairly interesting melodic themes. Namie's music is a good example of his style, especially songs like "How To Be a Girl" (awesome phat beat) and "I Have Never Seen".

More recently, Namie's done some slower, more sentimental songs, like "Can You Celebrate". It's a good tune, all about marriage and joy, but the goofy English in it is way more than I can stand. I have to be in the right mood to listen to it or it's just dumb.

Namie's private life has been rough, to say the least. She's very young, 21 as of this writing, I think, and just when she was settling down, starting a family (!) and whatnot, her mother was killed in a fairly brutal fashion. It's hard to say how this will affect her future, but her most recent recordings haven't been very good - she's got a psuedo-R&B style lately that just bugs me. So we'll see.

Globe is better than Namie Amuro.