, better known simply as Miz, is a Japanese pop/rock singer. Though most of her music is released in Japan, she does her work primarily from Gotland in Sweden, mainly doing promotional videos, photo shoots and recording there. She originally debuted in 1999 under Universal Music Japan using her real name, Watanabe Mizuki, releasing two singles. In 2003, she began working with the Swedish producer Tord Backstrom and debuted under Victor Entertainment with the pseudonym Miz in 2004. That same year, she released an English album in Sweden, with the lead single "Waiting" reaching #8 on the Hitlistan Swedish singles chart. In 2007, Watanabe returned to Universal Music Japan, changed her stage name to Mizrock, and released her first mini-album Good bye, yesterday and three singles. However, in 2009 she announced on her official blog that she had changed her stage name back to Miz. Her biggest hits in Japan are "New Day" and "In The Sky", the theme song for the Square Enix role-playing video game Grandia III.
Biography
At a very young age, Miz expressed a great interest and talent in music. She always wanted to become one of the singers on the radio, but living in such a rural area as Hokkaidō, there were very few opportunities for her. One of Miz's biggest hobbies during her high school years was going to a local beauty salon. And since she was a regular customer, she became very good friends with the salon manager. At this time there was held a talent competition, with advertising posters put up in over 20,000 beauty salons all over Japan. The salon owner suggested that Miz enter the contest, which she won from hundreds of other competitors. Mizrock entered the nationwide beauty contest "'99 Princess Audition", and was the winner out of the 3,200 entrants.
After graduating from high school, she moved to Tokyo. Soon afterward, she was signed under Universal Victor and, under her real name, released I WILL(TX TV show Renai Slot Kuru Kuru Vs ending theme song), her first single. Five months later, she released a second single called "Ambition"(PlayStation game Kouklo Theatros theme song). Neither single charted in the top 100 singles and she was not asked to release anything else after that. Both singles are now out of print in most Japanese CD stores. Mizrock wrote the lyrics to all four of the songs on these singles.
In August 2001, a song of hers, "Aoi Kioku", was used as the image song in the PC game Hello, world appearing in October the following year, when it was released on the soundtrack for the game. After the release of Ambition, her career stalled. She kept taking singing lessons at a studio, and eventually made a demo tape with the help of a writer. She was introduced to a producer named Tord Bäckström, who was looking for someone to perform a song written by a Swedish writer. In 2003, she travelled to Sweden and her first single, "Waiting", entered the charts at #8. Five months later, Miz released her second single, "New Day". The single entered the charts at #20, and is currently her biggest single. Her album, Story Untold, was released on September 22, 2004, and contains ten all-English songs.