We had a mini album just last August. While I would certainly love to have a new single or album soon, I wouldn't want her to work too hard or stress out. If she is going to LA for a break, that's more than wonderful! ;)

And while she can take her time to release a new single or album, her staff should hurry and get "Life Style Book" released sooooon! Really can't wait. LOL

^ aww... that is not acceptable... She is meant to be making music and have no personal life...

Man... who does she think she is... lol
Vacation... BAH! :D

She has already made three songs that we know of, so Im sure she has tons of stuff, plus Ayu seems like the person who is ALWAYS working on songs... lol
If she wanted too, I'm pretty sure she could release something every week for the rest of her life... lol

She's made atleast 13 songs and 4 videos. 12 & 3 in london & her staff said they just finished 1 in tokyo. And since they were working in hawaii probably 1 or 2 songs in that week. They also mentioned UN in tokyo, so that last one was probably another duet.

Please, tell me you're jocking O______O

I wish, but no. And if LA before the album is complete means a Mannie quadrilogy of pvs, personally I won't get much use out of the dvd that comes with this album.

UN?

urata naoya, from dream on and another song

Even if Mannie is in the videos, he is not the director, he's just an actor in a music video, where there's almost only bad actors(really, how often are there good actors in music videos?) so will you really let his presence in itself destroy the videos for you if they are otherwise good? We've only seen him in a trilogy before, which practically was one video, so disliking that won't mean the others are just as bad to you...that is unelss it's really the pure fact he's in it and not the video itself.

as bad as much of the acting has been in her pvs, I prefer any of the japanese actors/dancers to any foreigner in her pvs. She's the empress of japanese pop, foreigner's just look stupid in her pvs, the african american/european's doing the strange dances, the little boy saying do you want some candy, the women and men in the RNRC pvs with the lone japanese girl at the dinner table, the really bad acting from the kids in sweet season with the main one looking like the next richie rich & one of the worst acting jobs was the trilogy with mannie. So I want anyone that is atleast asian so they don't look so out of place, even if they do just as bad at acting.

I like her way of incorperating different nationalities. She's been doing it for every aspect of her work for a long time, and she herself doesn't even look all that Asian. When wearing make-up I think many people could mistake her for being caucasian at times.
Her music and image has been very...non-national and universal for a long time(more western(US and European) than Asian influences the later you get in her career) and when she goes typically japanese it's often in a parody fashion(Sparkle video) or in a voluntarily stereotypically fashion(ayu-mi-x 4 "fake asian" covers). Honestly I would be shocked if she started filling her videos only with asians. Especially with her now repeating "A WORLD is ONE" every chance she gets haha

She's big in Japan but that never restricted her. I don't know why, maybe it's her idols, maybe she doesn't like japanese culture or the business, maybe she wants to stand out...but that's the way she's always been doing it and an essential part of her artistry.

Maybe it's just the choices of actors that the directors choose or the directing itself, since she lets the directors come up with the pv ideas. IMO the pvs would be better quality if she invisioned the pv while writing the song instead of letting someone else do that. Its just like with her songs, the covers dont stand out like those that she writes. And I lost count how many tweets and TA messages I've wrote telling her how much more everyone would enjoy the songs with a piano if she were the one playing it.

I don't think we can expect her to take piano lessons for years just so we can hear her sing those songs while playing the piano herself xD
And I don't think we ever got confirmed who comes up with all the ideas, we do know that she can be very involved in both the ideas and the directing, when she doesn't like something she says so, we've seen it more than once. In the end she approves it and if she didn't like it she wouldn't do it so she's the one at fault. (And honestly I doubt her risky videos are her director's ideas, especially the ones against her label or the business, though her directors and staff most likely come up with quite a few of her videos. It's a simple fact that people that studied film or at the very least photography usually come up with better ideas to present in the format they learned)

That said I respect your opinion, I just think some parts of it may be flawed or simply unrealistic. Her playing piano? To get to the same level her painists and keyboarders have AND be able to sing at the same time she would need at the very least 5 years of intense training. Coming up with every video idea? Ayumi can come up with good ideas and she has. But she's not an expert in that area so I think not everything she comes up with will be gold. I think if EVERY idea would come from her we would end up with worse videos. But every now and then - why not? I think we are already getting that from her.

She already plays piano, thats how she use to write the music to some of her songs as CREA and she has already said the directors came up with the pvs. Leslie created those he directed, same with Muto and Luis.

I gotta say I must agree with this little sentence, foreigners always look out of place for me in japanese videos, too...BUT...On the other hand it also dipends on the story in PV, the message or the atmosphare they wanted to give away.

Plus I'm very much sure she isn't the one totally chosing acctors for her PVs.

As for the mannie, I think the videos were very colorful and full of some sort of thing going on, differently from lots of her other ones... as for why you think they were bad is probably because u have issues with Mannie's persona being in Ayu's life, which probably doesn't give you the cold/clear impression for you....

She played enough keyboard(I don't think we ever heard about her actually buying a piano) to write the melodies but stated that she has no knowledge about composition at all - an experienced piano player will come to have quite a bit of knowledge about it. That's a gigantic difference. Everybody can play small melodies on a keyboard, actually playing the whole background instrumental including the chords, submelodies and basses is something you learn for many years. And we have no indication that she can do that.
Also, didn't she say that writing them on a keyboard didn't work for her so she started just humming the melodies to her composers and having them write them down?

And you just brought examples for some directors coming up with them, I asked if ALL the video ideas come from directors and a general statement like "the directors come up with the ideas" doesn't exclude some(exceptions) coming from her. I don't think she has ever made a statement ofthat sort about all of her videos and we know she is incredibly modest when it comes to getting credit for her work. Even if she doesn't come up with the main idea she'll still change everything she doesn't like. No matter how small or big. Example: When the whole staff had to stay longer because she didn't like her hair in GREEN after she had shot some scenes already.

Look at the old pics from her childhood. She has played piano since before grade school. She also gets a hotel room with a piano every time she can.

I've never heard of her doing anything except going with her directors ideas. And it also seems to be they have a casting call and the directors pick from who shows up. With Virgin Road, Muto only had 5 actors to pick from, so Mannie may have been the best of a group of 5, but that doesnt make him any good at it.

um just to chime in, like LOL said, any dumb*** with a keyboard can write a song on it, unless they're completely tone deaf.

It's not some great accomplishment.


Anyways, it's really hilarious to see a long conversation between isthisLOL and crazy jhobo.


oh and, foreigners dont look weird to me in her pvs...they look like every other music video...maybe I dont watch enough japanese pvs to know the difference.

I thought it was the other way around... She didn't like anything that people made for M and couldn't really find a way to make it sound (by humming) so she played it out on the keyboard?

I may be wrong then, but the other way round makes more sense to me. Humming a melody is much easier you have in mind than going from a melody you have in mind to playing it on an instrument or writing it out.

I cant remember, I know it was the song M and it was either or, that's why she "created" CREA though.

EDIT:
I found the article... It was the keyboard first, but she wasn't very good with it so she sang into a voice recorder thing