Yui

Drive thirty minutes north from Fukuoka City off the Fukuoka Highway and near the city lies the unassuming town of Koga. Yui Yoshioka was born here. Here lived a shy girl with her mother who played alone and liked to listen to music and sing. Her parents had divorced and her father has died since. She began writing poems and songs at junior high school and eventually determined to make her dream a reality when in the hospital ill one day. Receiving advice from a local amateur band she dropped out of high school, began attending a music school part-time and began performing on the sidewalk near Fukuoka City's Tenjin subway station among other places. Upon advice by her instructors at school Yui participated in the Sony Music Japan's SD Audition in March 2004. She was accorded top scores and received a deal as reward. Her debut single was issued by an independent in December of that year and was called It's Happy Line/I Know. In the process she was developing what would later become known as Yui-Go ('Yui-Language'), which is nothing more than a string of not necessarily related English words. Fuji Television hired her to write music for its serial, Fukigen Na Gene.

The singer/songwriter contributed songs to the films Hinoko and Bleach and released her debut album, From Me To You, in 2006. It debuted on the Japanese charts. She appeared in the film Song Of The Sun in the summer of the same year. Playing the main character she also performed her own music. That year the Japan Academy awarded her the Best Newcomer prize.

Her sophomore album, Can't Buy Me Love, was released in 2007. This one landed at position number one. She contributed more music to films and soundtracks and issued a live DVD called Thank You My Teens.

More commercial endeavours followed as well as a 2008 album, I Loved Yesterday. Next came My Short Stories, but no live activities followed. She focused on writing and extraneous collaborations instead. Another album, entitled Holidays In The Sun, also landed atop of the Japanese charts.

She attended a charity concert for the Fukushima disaster in 2011 and released an album called How Crazy Your Love. She staged her first show outside Japan in Hong Kong that year.

Amidst all the success she announced another - this time longer - hiatus in 2012.

She was back in 2013 with a new band, dubbed Flower Flower and more rocking than her previous work, but several appearances were cancelled due to what she described as "panic attack.

" She had a shotgun wedding in 2015 and gave birth to twins boys.