First Love is the debut Japanese-language studio album (second overall) by Japanese-American recording artist Hikaru Utada, released on March 10, 1999, by Eastworld.

Due to its enormous sales and revolutionary nature, the album is still presented as a milestone in the history of Japanese pop music.

Utada promoted the album by releasing three singles: "Automatic/Time Will Tell," "Movin' on Without You" and the title track, all which were accompanied by a music video.

In 1996, the group was re-branded as Cubic U, an R&B project that focused primarily on Hikaru, resulting in the English language album Precious in 1998 with record label Toshiba EMI.

[10] During her studies, Utada signed as a solo artist with Toshiba EMI and began recording her album First Love.

During the process of the album, Utada desired to become a singer-songwriter and occasionally practised producing and composing her music rather than becoming a Japanese idol.

First, Utada consulted with an arranger to create the sound, and then wrote melodies and lyrics while playing loops of the tracks.

"[16] The lyrics to the tracks from First Love are written primarily in Japanese by Utada and featured interspersed English-language phrases.

[19] The title track is a power ballad[19] conveying slow and off-key vocals that complimented the music to the album.

[19] "Movin' on Without You" is a disco and house-inspired track that was influenced by the early 1990s dance music throughout the Western part of the world and lasts a duration of four minutes and forty-one seconds.

"Interlude" was produced into a song called "Kotoba ni Naranai Kimochi" on Utada's Distance album.

[27][28] After fifteen years of its release, First Love was re-released by Universal Music Japan on March 10, 2014, in two separate versions.

[31] The deluxe edition also carries with it memorabilia from that time, including a hard cover booklet filled with unreleased photoshoots, handwritten lyrics, promotional items as well as replicas of the tickets and backstage passes to her "LUV LIVE" concert.

Tomoyuki Mori of Amazon praised the album for its heartfelt lyrics and said that her voice is rich in emotional expression.

[60] Tower Records described the album as "an epoch-making work that played a pioneering role in completely changing the concept of popular music in Japan.

He also commented on the album's sudden astronomical sales, saying that it "achieved a combination of revolutionary quality and popularity that had previously been thought impossible.

He praised Utada's "seamless use of words, which makes the most of her unique bilingualism (she is a native speaker of both Japanese and English) - or perhaps even unaware of it - as one of the great inventions in the history of Japanese entertainment," adding, "I don't think anything has yet emerged that surpasses this invention, at least in terms of publicly recognized methods and techniques.

[65][66] The album sold over five million copies in a month in March and April of 1999 and placed Utada among the 100 wealthiest people in Japan.

[70][66] Oricon named First Love the best-performing album of 1999 in Japan, with 7,365,830 copies sold by the end of the fiscal year.

[79] In September 2007, Rolling Stone Japan ranked First Love No.99 on its list of the "100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time".