Yōko Takahashi

Japanese pop singer Yōko Takahashi was born August 28, 1966 in Tokyo. She released Pizzicato, her debut album, in 1992. Her next two albums, 1993’s Kugatsu no Sotsugyö and 1994’s Watashi wo Mitsukete failed to perform as well as her debut, but her career spiked in 1995 when her record “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis” was used as the theme song for the hugely popular anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. The ongoing success of that single led to a 1997 album of songs inspired by Evangelion that not only gave Yōko Takahashi her biggest success on the album charts, but also included “Tamashii no Refrain”, a number 3 hit that was her biggest single to that point. She continued to record steadily in the next century with albums like Sore wa Toki ni Anata wo Hagemashi, Toki ni Sasae Naru Mono and 20th Century Boys & Girls doing respectably, but not coming close to repeating the massive success she achieved with her work associated with Neon Genesis Evangelion, a fact that would be driven home by the worldwide success of the 2021 compilation album Evangelion: Finally which combined songs she sang for the original series as well as works from Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance.

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