Ringo Sheena

Initial solo career

Sheena released her first official single, "Kōfukuron", in May 1998, when she was 19 years old. She subsequently made singles "Kabukichō no Joō" and "Koko de Kiss Shite", the latter becoming her first hit.

This was followed by the release of her first album, Muzai Moratorium, in February 1999. The album was a major hit. "Gips" was due to be the next single, but when Sheena had to cancel recording due to illness, "Honnō" was released as the fourth single instead. Sheena chose a hospital as the setting for the music video for "Honnō".

The fifth and sixth singles, "Gips" and "Tsumi to Batsu", were released at the same time to prevent overlap with the release of her second album, Shōso Strip, in March 2000, "Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana'' in February 2003, and ''Heisei Fuzoku" in 2007.

Sheena had initially indicated that she would retire as "Sheena Ringo" when she had released three albums. At the time the second album was released, she was among the top three Japanese female artists, along with Hikaru Utada and Ayumi Hamasaki, in terms of popularity and annual income. However, she was uncomfortable with being regarded as an icon, and wanted her career to branch out more from the mainstream. When she began to produce her third album under the tentative title "Fushigi, Waizatsu, Ekisentorikku (不思議・猥雑・エキセントリック, Wonder, Vulgar, Eccentric)" she intended to make it her last solo album.

Sheena released the single "Mayonaka wa Junketsu" in March 2001, with the intention of including it on a third album. The music video was created in a retro-anime style that depicted her as a sort of mid-'60s spy-movie heroine. In 2002, she released a two-disc multilingual cover album, Utaite Myōri: Sono Ichi. Since she felt that a cover album did not count as a bona fide album, she began to work on her third original album.

In 2003, Sheena released her third album, titled Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana.

Towards the conclusion of her solo career, Sheena released her final solo single, "Ringo no Uta" ("Ringo's Song"), which was adopted by the national children's song TV program Minna no Uta. This song had a summation of her career, and the music video included references to all of her previous videos.

In 2004, Sheena undertook the role of music director for the stage play KKP (Kentaro Kobayashi Produce) No. 004 Lens, which is based on the story of her short film Tanpen Kinema Hyaku-Iro Megane.

Sheena was born with an esophageal atresia in which the esophagus narrows as it approaches the stomach. Treatment of this involved several operations, at least one of which required her right shoulder blade being cut open. These surgeries left Sheena with noticeable scars on her shoulder blades, said to give the impression that an angel's wings had been removed.

Sheena's older brother Junpei Shiina is an R&B musician, who debuted in 2000 under Sony. Since 2006, he has been managed by Kronekodow, Sheena's personal management agency. The two have collaborated musically several times. In 2002, they covered three songs in English: Marvin Gaye's "The Onion Song" for Sheena's album Utaite Myōri, "Where Is the Love" (originally performed by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway) for Junpei Shiina's album Discover, and Toto's "Georgy Porgy". The latter one was recorded as a part of a special unit called Yokoshima, featuring Junpei Shiina on keyboards and Ringo Sheena on chorus. In 2007, the pair sang a duet on her single "Kono Yo no Kagiri".

In November 2000, Sheena married guitarist Junji Yayoshi, who was a member of her backing band Gyakutai Glycogen. Sheena gave birth to a son in July 2001. The pair then later divorced in January 2002.

In September 2013, gossip magazine Josei Jishin published an article that linked Sheena romantically with music director Yuichi Kodama and stated that she has secretly given birth to her second child. Sheena addressed these rumours publicly during her Tōtaikai concerts in November 2013, announcing that she gave birth in spring of 2013 to a girl. As this was close to the release of her single "Irohanihoheto/Kodoku no Akatsuki", she did not feel it was appropriate to link the birth of her daughter with single promotions, so decided not to announce it at the time. The footage of her announcement was released on her Tōtaikai DVD in March 2014.

In November 2022, Sheena and her record label EMI Records received criticism for the artwork of her remix album, Hyakuyaku no Chō. The artwork of the remix album as well as bonus goods from the Universal Music store included a logo bearing similarity to the Red Cross emblem. Universal Music Japan, the distributor of EMI, released a press announcement on their website apologizing for the usage of the medical cross. Universal Japan announced that the release would be postponed while the company revised the design of the album and bonus goods. The album was released digitally on its originally planned release date, November 30, and a physical CD version of the album was released on January 13, 2023.