Hehe, my post wasen't really directed at yours, more at Mad's. =P Actually the last paragraph is more or less a general statement, thoughts.

Her image made me take a closer look at her music, but her lyrics and voice made me love her. Lyrics are very important, and it's nice to see intelligent ones like Ayu's.

She definitely relies on her looks, and so does a lot of the companies advertising with her. No denying that her looks attracts listeners.

I heard her voice first though, and I think that applies to a lot of people, too.

For me, it was her look that made me fall in love with her. After that I decided to give her a listen (with Dearest) and I never really liked the song, but as I listened to other songs, I began to like them much more.

Is it only I that feel the tension in saying that you fell for her looks first if you're a guy, and that it's more okay if you're a girl?

I don't mind either, falling for/liking something beautiful is a very natural thing to do, but our society seems to create such a tension over things like that.

I think it's both. Image is what draws people to her music, and then her music is what entraps the people.

Entertainment, from the start of the tradition in the Ancient times, has relied on people with good looks. We want aesthetic beauty as well as other things, so it's natural to "judge an artist by their looks". Covers make impacts because that's what's stopping me when I walk by a bookstore and going "what is that?"

I based my post on the thoughts that I had after reading X2's post, sorry if my English was confusing/outright wrong.

What I tried to say was basically that thanks to todays society I can feel a bit of a tension on the matter of liking Ayumi because of her looks, and not her talents.

If you're a guy and say that you fell for Ayumi because of her looks, you'll be seen as a mindless drooling dork.

If you're a girl and say that you fell for Ayumi because of her looks, people won't react that way, hehe.

But like I said, I don't mind if people got interested in her because of her looks or whatever reason, just voicing my thoughts on that I think this kind of 'thing' exists.

Well, I'm not looking forward to understanding people. I honestly don't give a damn about image and looks. :laugh

ayu could be a beggar in rags with lepromatous leprosy and lymphatic filariasis, if her songs had been the same as I first listened to, I'd still would have become her fan. I love her music and she's the only artist I've been able to enjoy ALL tracks in almost all of her albums. That has never happened before with any artists, usually what catches my attention on other artists albums are the "single worth" tracks or the first 5 tracks, leading to a chain of boring songs after. For me that is called a real talent :yes

I could just as well post that I agree with ImpactBreakers coming post before he has posted, in any named thread.

It's very much the same for me, I do enjoy all her tracks but there's a clear difference in how much I listen to them, but they are all of high quality to me.

^Me too! Very special thing.

And about the mention of caring a lot about understanding lyrics:
I've been studying Japanese and my feeling for lyrics is slowly getting better. I was translating through the Japanese lyrics of Surreal last night and I was like...wahhhhhh these lyrics are soooo nice. The differences between English and Japanese are huge...if you were to try and sing Surreal in English it would be completely awkward. I really believe that English song cannot carry words that are full of meaning; it'd feel too heavy and wouldn't flow. In Japanese you have some words are just so beautiful in addition to the beauty of the common word (beauty in simplicity). Moreover, in English, I feel as if it's too damn easy to sound cliche using simpler words. This sort of difference is part of why I love Japanese as a language. Even just reading wataru's translation to English, Surreal's lyrics are just so refreshing...so much energy and they come straight from Ayu's heart, and you can feel it. Ayu's music has so much energy while being so varied. Even the darker songs are backed up with energy without hurting the tone. I think that it's because of this energy that Ayu's music makes me want to LIVE.

I agree with everything you said except that. D:

I respectfully disagree. As someone who learned English as a second language, I can assure you from a asian foreigner's point of view, English sounds very nice. True, Surreal would sound wierd in English, but that occurs with any kind of translations.

Also, what about poets like Emily Dickson and Shakespeare? They, in my opinion, wrote wonderful poetry in English. Their poetry have meaning beyond interpretation. English is beyond today's pop culture and the sub-coherent English of the rappers, and every language can be beautiful and full of meaning.

edit: [It was hard phrasing that particular thought, and I can see that I failed. I didn't mean that English has to be devoid of meaning to flow. It's just that the way English songs employ language to convey emotion seems to be quite different from the way Japanese songs do it. Please read on, I commented further on this below.]

To be sure, I'm fully aware of the power of English poetry but I do have objective reasons for my belief. From my experience with English poetry, I'd say that, in general, a poem needs to be both heard and read. It is when poem is read that you can let it soak in your mind so that you can start seeing the different techniques and effects that the poet uses. English poetry can potentially be very weighty because the density of ideas can get very high, what with metaphors and tone control and connotation and irony and sarcasm, imagery, etc etc all coming together and interacting.

It seems to me that English song, on the other hand, is not a form suited to carrying such weight. I've tried imagining a song with that kind of idea density in a song and I concluded that it would just be incomprehensible simply because the mind needs time to really digest the words and phrases if the idea density is so high. Therefore, I think that English song relies more on common everyday words and experiences. It relies on concrete situation to convey its emotion. As a result, we have a grand divide between English poetry and song.

Japanese lyrics, on the other hand, can afford to be more abstract it seems. It may be linguistic or it may be cultural, and it's probably a combination of the two. Somehow, very specific and beautiful albeit rare words can be incorporated in lyrics without loss of flow. I mean, if people put complicated words into Japanese lyrics and it wasn't compatible, they would stop. They still use awfully cool words and even sophisticated language in lyrics, which tells me that this is equilibrium--Japanese popular music flows with sophisticated language and beautiful, rarer words.

With regard to the whole comparison between English and Japanese on this matter, my two friends who are Japanese (and who speak it fluently and are quite in touch with Japanese culture in addition to having been raised in the US) agree with me on these points.

Despite all my efforts to be objective, I have to admit that because English is practically my first language, there must be some bias. Nevertheless, I have to say that Japanese has many advantages over English and vice versa. The power of English is its specificity. Despite difficulty to learn and the myriad of exceptions to its grammatical "rules," it can be very powerful technically because you can be so specific in the expression of ideas. I would say that English relies less on context and unspoken understanding than does Japanese; Japanese has a much looser grammatical structure. Although I've never experienced Japanese technical language, comparing everyday language leads me to this conclusion. I think this is one reason why English seems to feel heavier than Japanese does, especially English poetry.

I believe that one can compare two languages objectively, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each. It's just that the language barrier is so massively huge. To be able to make such a comparison, you'd have to have studied both of the languages to be compared quite rigorously. Actually, I hope to be able to be one of the few people around who can make such a comparison between Japanese and English, eventually. For now, these are my beliefs, whichi I've tried to make as objective as possible.

immel, your English is excellent :D

HiruNoKaze, I understand what you're saying. Certainly, poetry allows for more flexibility with regards to the use of the language than song, since the creation of poetry relies only on words (unless its holographic poetry) whereas much of popular music requires a unity of various elements such as voice, instruments, and lyrics. However, please allow me to disagree. I think lyrics in English can be just as meaningful. The best example I can think of at the moment is Fiona Apple (for a pop artist). In my experience, rock music in English has much better lyrics than its pop counterpart.

The problem with a lot of lyrics written in English is there is always an attempt to rhyme (this happens in rock music as well), and in that sense English suffers moreso than Japanese. Rhyme can be clever if it is done by someone with skill. This, however, is a very rare skill, and so lyricists rely on familiar rhymes that might make the song sound cliche or, at its worst, forced and artificial, using rhyme for the sake of sounding "musical". This is where the specificity of English becomes difficult, because there are fewer words to select from that rhyme perfectly with one another.

Anyway, I'm always glad to hear from someone who knows a lot about poetry :) Are you an English major, by any chance? Who do you read? Sylvia Plath (middle and late period, mostly) is my Ayu of poetry. And not just because she's popular and Gwyneth Paltrow played her! Hehe.

Thank you for the lovely discussion so far, guys!

^Ah, excellent point about rhyme. But honestly I don't think rhyme is THAT much of a handicap. At least in the world of poetry, rhyme seems to be but an elementary tool; being a good rhymer isn't a huge deal at all.

Does song-writing always have to take a backseat to poetry in terms of linguistic sophistication? I found myself desiring English lyrics comparable to poetry because of this question. The conclusion I came to, however, was that English mainstream songs just can't support that kind of language, both linguistically and culturally. Far from deriding song-writing, I explained it with the hypothesis that songs express emotions more with situation rather than with linguistics.

Y'know, I used to fear the possibility that as my Japanese improves, the wonder of Ayu's lyrics dissipate. I didn't have much of a grasp on what was common and language and what was not. But now, I'm getting more of a feel for it, and I'm glad to say that no, her luster is far from dulled. Although she writes in common language much of the time, I find that her ideas remain so very rich, even considering them as abstract entities removed from all language.

I guess it all goes to show...Ayu's the ultimate "idol." She's the all-purpose wonder-girl. But she doesn't do rap. At least not anymore. (thank goodness) lol is pop-ballad-rock the triad of emotional expression? or are there other venues that she could explore...? She tried gospel, hehe. Maybe jazz next time? Maybe she should use some more international instruments...I love mandolin for one. More classical guitar!! woooo! oh oh maybe she should have a ballad with traditional Japanese instruments? (tsugaru shamisen!!)

Well, I meant in the area of music, rhyme is not as successful as in poetry, where people take a lot more time to master the skill.

Given that poetry is the art of words and thus emphasizes language capability more than music, which unifies several elements such as language, voice, and instrumentation, I'll have to say that poetry is technically more sophisticated linguistically than songwriting. But these are two different artforms with their own purposes and objectives. The intent of poetry is the mastery of language; with music it is the mastery of sound. So music cannot support the full linguistic complexity of poetry, and poetry cannot fully support the sonic complexity of music. And, yes, I agree, emotion comes across as more expressive in song because it is immediate, intimate, and tangible, whereas in poetry the emotional connection is more cerebral. The language has to be processed without the aid of the poet's actual voice.

Ayu's Will and theme for a-nation '03 have a distinctive Japanese flavor. The latter uses Japanese instruments :)

Yes, you make excellent points, I neglected to consider how each lives in its own domain.

What are your thoughts on the ability of English song lyrics to support abstract ideas? I don't think it's optimal...that's why situation is employed.

Maybe I'm just too optimistic, but I can envision poet-turned-songwriter writing some really profound lyrics. Seems like you just need a slight increase in the quality of diction, allow some figurative language to expand your options, and blammo, rhyme isn't much of a problem anymore. Agh, I so often find myself enjoying the melody to a song and then being feeling slightly disappointed with the lyrics after actually listening to them (I'm a melody kinda guy at heart, as opposed to a lyric guy, but Ayu's evened me out). Excellent feelings conveyed, but ideas are so lacking...I feel as if so much more could be done... At least, don't you think the content of Japanese lyrics is more idea based than that of English lyrics, in general? I think this is a main point I've been trying to drive at. I'm drawn more toward Japanese lyrics because they are more balanced concerning idea and emotion content.

Oh yaaaaa...I rarely listen to those two songs...still need shamisen!

Very interesting posts to read, and it's hard to add anything, but as for writing pop lyrics (or rock) in english, I think Ill have to agree with HiruNoKaze, he pretty much sums up my thoughts. Compared to japanese I think english has some of the problems that it has compared to .f.ex. spanish. It's more direct and use of pictures and subtleness is more difficult. I think many of the germanic languages have compared to other languages. In most of those languages you can't just put down a verb and get a "meaningful" sentence, which IMO makes it heavier. Also the use of metaphores (cultural) seems to have been a bit "washed out" and is more difficult to place naturally into the context. Often it turns out melo-dramatic and strange. I have no clue why.

Like you mentioned, rhyming would be a lot easier in japanese compared to english. This is due to the structure and sounds of the language, when you have fewer sounds, fewer vowels and every word ends in a vowel, it's not that hard to keep a "flowing" and natural feel, even if it doesen't rhyme.

Lastly, and this hasen't got much to do with the meaning of the words, but I think japanese is probably one of the most beautiful languages to sing in. THere is one simple reason for it, and that's the frequency of vowels. It also has only "clean" sounds. I find japanese more pleasant to listen to than f.ex english and german when used in songs.

Agreed, my friend. You'd think that Japanese would be choppier because it's all syllabic and vowely. But it's not the case! I agree that having very few glide sounds and being like all vowels gives it a more pure sound (perhaps we could make an analogy with plucking a guitar string in the middle vs near the end. the harmonic decomposition of the sound is more pure in the former case). I think there might very well be a positive correlation between frequency of vowel sounds and resonance. Seems like you can really resonate a note if you're singing on a vowel.

I like Italian as a singing language too. Infamous for its many rhyming sounds plus very very flowy sound. Birth-language of opera... (Go Bocelli!!)

But I tell you what, I don't like (I'm Vietnamese) Vietnamese (or any other tonal language) very much in comparison for singing. Theoretically speaking, I believe the tonal aspect interferes with / handicaps what the singing can do.

I think that people have come to believe that but her looks have just been put there for her. She's defintly got talent. There's no question there. Being fashionable was just the next step for her in her career and now that she's so popular and has completed all of said *steps* she is considered an idol.