A. Not quite—that’s singer-songwriter ACO, rocking a killer pixie cut and specs in Dragon Ash’s 1999 smash video “Grateful Days.”
ACO burst onto the scene at 18 after relentlessly mailing demos to her idol, Chara. Her big break came when Dragon Ash mastermind Kj tapped her for “Grateful Days.” The track moved nearly a million copies, throwing her smoky, melancholic vocals straight into the mainstream.
She backed up the hype that same year with the Yoshinori Sunahara-produced solo hit “Yorokobi ni Saku Hana,” shifting 300,000 units.
While she started in smooth R&B, ACO quickly pivoted into edgier, left-of-the-dial territory like trip-hop and electronica. Armed with a signature “soft yet resilient” voice, she remains a fiercely respected underground icon for Japan’s true music heads.
