yeah but Miley will continue this style I think.
Ayu won't, I guess.
(or just partialy)

@AyUmIXx I loved your signature :heart, the idea of putting all of them in the same room was great

Wonderful. So there's a really good chance that she's not done with the peach/tan color scheme yet. I guess I'll have one more picture to add to my signature. :rolleyes

It's her Instagram filter guys.

From your signature MOON's cover looks so beautiful and unique compared to the others. Also notice how 90% of those covers are all in a row from recent years... lol.

That was the point. :laugh to show how much she's been using this color scheme over the last couple of years. It started with MOON. They're in chronological order too.

I wonder if tweeting a compilation of the latest cream colored covers to Ayu would make her realize how similar everything has been so far.

Related to your gorgeous signature : isn't Hello New Me supposed to be after Pray?
Omg, from autumn 2012 onwards she's been using the peach theme so many times. But it looks beautiful nonetheless!

^ you're right ^^

And yeah, it looks like this new album will feature the same color scheme we've been facing since 2012. Judging by the candle, colors may be pastel pink, golden and black...

The video that revealed the covers is also covered in the same color scheme.

fixed it. :D

as if covers weren't enough, her videos now follow the same color scheme too? jeeze.

Don't get me wrong, I think these covers are all really pretty, but it's too much. If these were the covers of some of her singles and albums throughout her whole career, it'd be fine. However, except one or two of them, these are all from the last 2.5 years. Half of these look like they're from the same photoshoot.

I don't get tired of ayu using pink / tan colours. lol

I just don't want her to do something like Party Queen again...

+1

I love those kind of covers when they work (MOON, Love songs, Hello new me) but when it just seems like being peach for the sake of being pretty it's meh... There's 0 artistic input, they're just pretty pictures. Which is sad because a few years ago Ayu was my artistic muse with PVs like Marionette, Mirrorcle World, Sparkle, etc. :/

Since Love songs (though I love that album) she's not visually artistic at all. There's no concept, no strong theme. The only interesting thing she's done in recent years is the snow falling when she's standing in front of the painting in Sweet scar and Return road...

I think the past few years have been Ayu's idea of taking a break.. basically, just doing some basic routine and probably saving her best ideas when she has enough compiled for a new album and era when she's ready.


I mean, she does her usual tour, nothing too spectacular and the videos have been low budget for a while so I assume she'll do something huge sometime with her next album.

I LOVE Love songs except now I am listening to all of her older rockish music as ther music so far has been cohesive for me.. except for the new album so I'm getting rather bored :P ! (except for the new album) heh

^

I like that theory. :) It's better than a hiatus. It does seem like she's just going through the motions and releasing average material for the fans. Which is fine, but I can't wait for Ayu to go back to her awesomeness she had up until the L single.

This is only somewhat related but...

I'm saddened that Oricon has apparently recently stopped counting all overseas sales of Japanese products. They are collecting data from shops like CDJapan and YesAsia, but the data is no longer applicable to the daily/weekly/monthly/yearly charts.

It has something to do with the sales from overseas outlets becoming too large or something.

Lelio, XOXO and Terminal are FAR from what I would call average. They are way high up above it. Their production is pretty great.

I defiantly agree she's been taking it easy. I've noticed that for awhile now. I kept asking myself "Where is the Ayu from a few years ago?" But alas everyone needs a break

Oricon does have some reason for not counting overseas' sales anymore, they never should have counted in the first place. It's a Japanese ranking, so the numbers should be only for the Japanese territory, just like Billboard USA and any other ranking site. I think those numbers started to make some considerable gap between artists who sell a lot outside Japan and artists that can't do it. Think about the numbers that these girlgroups and boybands can sell around the Asian continent, it wouldn't be fair to count their sales when artists like ayumi don't sell that big.

Oricon never counted asian sales, they count sales exclusively from Japan and maybe a several outlets with Japanese versions (specifically like yesasia after several years that they didn't).

Do they count overseas sales from CDJapan, HMV, etc...?

I find it odd that they keep cutting their numbers?
I mean, are they trying to make themselves irrelevant?

She'll come to a point where she'll go all back into her image. Everything is too easy going now and I'm sure she'll get bored of it as her life is her music career and she's the most sincere artist out there I know.

Lelio official lyrics

http://imgsrc.baidu.com/forum/w%3D58...54564e7438.jpg

From Baidu

The first line is "Jump out or stay"

And the chorus is "Lelio Lelio Lelio Lelio DJ Yeah That's You"

If you buy a japanese version of a single/album from Yesasia and CDJapan, it counts to Oricon.

Source:https://www.yesasia.com/global/custo...on-answer.html
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/oricon.html

I'm not sure about HMV

Not anymore it doesn't
http://www.someanithing.com/?p=1552

OMG, and this was posted yesterday O_O

http://i.imgur.com/CBEjKST.jpg

Reuploaded. Interesting.

I love how she writes the official English (ea ea ea ea ea), lol.

Hm so Robin Morssink co-wrote the music and mixed it.

I can't believe they're releasing exercise dvds. A EXERCISE LOL

I've checked the trailer and laughed hard. Every second killed me xD Though i imagine people doing that at home and it definetely will raise the mood. The ending is fabulous "Are you ready? A Exercise!"

Omg I can't believe this is actually a thing...

Yeah I just saw the trailer/commercial for the exercise videos. My reaction was wtf? Lol

I disagree. If the sale is made in Japan for a Japanese product, it should count, regardless of where that product ends up going.

In any case, Ayu's sales are about to take a nose-dive because a good portion of those would be to international consumers.

What?? I didn't know that, that's terrible news! o_o

For sure! It's a Japanese version.... :eviltongu .....so why wouldn't it count as a Japanese sale?

I do think that sales will start to drop a bit at least with international fans unable to contribute

They wanted to focus on the Japanese market. As in what the people in Japan liked. It's totally different if the item is sent overseas. It serves as a guidance for companies that wanted to market their artist locally.

When are these covers going to be released??

They should just make a separate chart, huh?

I was just thinking that—, it's very close to release date.

It doesn't make sense, Oricon numbers are already low, another ranking would be lower... And there's nothing like that in any other country.

In regards to this Oricon chart issue, does anybody know how long this policy has been in act?
For all we know, they could've done this years ago and we didn't even realize it.
Man, this makes me sad to know that I can't really support Ayu, or any of my favorite j-pop artists anymore D:

so wait, i buy this woman's entire discography and i can't even support her sales in oricon?! WHAT? i'm so ANGRY

AHS kind of does their own sales tracking from the members (the "who bought product, version, how many, and from where" threads!). Granted it's no where near what Oricon does or as sophisticated. It is our own sales chart of sorts. Perhaps if time permitting, we can create our own tracking lists based on purchases and downloads for a certain time span. Kind of like a database. Oh well, it's just day dreaming here for me. Ayu is my number one regardless!

As soon as I find spare cash, I'm buying this album!

Come on avex, give me the covers already! :grumpy

It's just a little over 2 weeks for the release, I can't believe we still don't have the covers!

Here I was, thinking this album would have a better promotion, with the showcase and all, but considering their lack of enthusiasm with the album information I guess not...

It's not lack of enthusiasm, it's called building a hype...

But her promotion and marketing could be tones better still. I really wonder if it's because ayu doesn't want it or if it's her team.

^ I don't think it's building a hype anymore, it's taking so long that's almost making me loose the interest in the covers (I was much more hyped for them about 2 weeks ago then I am now, because now I know that soon the album will be out anyway) , they lost the good timing already. For me it feels like they're releasing everything so late that it feels they just remember on the last second that they still have to release the album information before the release date (like, there's the showcase and TA has the songs already, so they just forgot about the rest)... The feeling I get is that they just don't care, a good promotion would have started already, but they didn't even release the covers yet to start using them for the promotion.

The last few months. CDJapan only recently got word of it.

Also covers should probably be coming veeeerrry soon. I don't think they really have an agenda when it comes to their release but when they're ready, we'll get them.

I kinda agree with you. I'm already losing interest on these covers. And it's impossible that they're not done editing them yet. It might end up being some left over from those free CDs photoshoots anyway (which will let me angry in some type of way)..

I'm surprised people still take the Oricon charts seriously. They're a law on to themselves.

Yeah, I just heard about the Oricon numbers...the fact that Ayu has a higher percentage of foreign fans compared to Tomochin (Tomomi Itano, former AKB48) or even Kisumai (Kis-My-Ft2, Johnny's group; not to mention their high sales numbers)...this album isn't going to even take #2. In fact, this Oricon move has pretty much ruined Ayu's #1 chances in the future, because not the Oricon will consider Japan sales only and not including foreign fans...

But even then I don't care about the Oricon anymore. Again, too much domination by AKB48 and Johnny's groups, which doesn't have a high percentage of international fanbase compared to Ayu...oh well.

Mediatraffic could count those numbers so they wouldn't be left in a limbo state. But I doubt that they even have any contact with CDJapan, YesAsia, etc.

Yes, despite most of the new songs sounding pretty good, they've lost the momentum because the whole album has essentially leaked, and most people are interested in the music, with the covers and Pvs being secondary. So yes the interest will definitely wane.

Her marketing team seems to be made up of amateurs who know nothing about actual marketing.

Do you guys think it's possible for the album to get delayed? Doesn't the cover have to be ready a certain amount of time in advance to ship the copies out on time?

^
The covers are already done and the album may be in the packaging process. They're just didn't upload it online. It's been years since her covers are uploaded online on the very last second. Which has become a bad strategy in my opinion.

You guys I just realized we don't even have any magazine appearances...
This while album is going to be released without any form of real promotion lol.

She doesn't live in Japan anymore, the showcase had only a few dates, no magazine, no radio or TV appearances to promote this album. I really don't think we can expect much of this release. At least we had great songs.

It's just so strange.

You'd think that with any album full of "WORLD WIDE FAMOUS PRODUCERS WHO MADE SONGS FOR LADY GAGA AND BRITNEY SPEARS!!!1!!111!", which they've been relying on for any form of hype, would at least come with promotion.



(Granted, I haven't really been seeing promotion for Itano Tomomi's album either.)

I didn't know that. I figured she would ask her husband to move with her to Japan. Not trying to be nosy but any idea where she moved to in the states?

In 2006 Secret was 'delayed' if I'm not mistaken, but that was because it had been planned to be a 7-track mini album but ayu then decided to make it into a full album. I don't think this is the case with Colours, so I think a delay is unlikely.

she lives in el-lay :cool

Her husband is studying, I doubt he would break this. Ayu lives in LA now.

hey guys side note: i have a friend who's an old fan of ayu. he hasn't listened since 2004ish. i played lelio and he commented how all her new stuff sounds like this. then I played what is forever love and he said "oh is this something from her old stuff?" and ya he remarked how the song is good and it reminds him of her older ballads with a more j-pop/r&b flavor. good news then, a non-ahs opinion of new ayu vs. old ayu

Lelio PV was... unveiled?
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=851012421594190

I LOVE IT btw.

Full version 3:28 long
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/rCDvFVNm37s/

From the screencaps, it looks cheap but the actual video is entertained, very well edited. I love it even though she looks like Koda Kumi at some shot. lol

wow. out of nowhere hahaha

by the way it reminds a lot of Namie Amuro latest PV's and this is my favorite song on this album.

FTL album ver pv
http://www.flvxz.com/?url=http://www...ew/OpZBAr-Yq3U

MGR album ver pv
http://www.flvxz.com/?url=http://www...ew/24OMFLQSLqA

Lelio pv
http://www.flvxz.com/?url=http://www...ew/rCDvFVNm37s

Lelio is just beyond terrible...

I love merry go round. Ayu got more beautiful !

Lelio... wow, such a sloppy PV.
It's not really a dance PV, cause Ayu is just making some random moves, the edit isn't really nice to look at as well. Such a pity. Looks like just randomly shot in a studio. :(

Lelio PV is...

...so...

...freaking...

...terrible... T_T

edit 1: I've just watched new FLT PV...

edit 2: ...I didn't watch any new PVs, I didn't watch any new PVs, I didn't watch any new PVs... :mshock

Lelio would probably look a bit less weird if they didn't do the copy/paste effect.

Lelio pv just LOL, she like borrowed costume from Kuu n Namie.

MGR pv slightly better than single ver pv, but still meaningless, i only wonder why they used view from hk's victoria harbour.

and now i love the original FTL pv more!

I'm just gonna wait for HD... Closed Lelio 8s after it started

Not in the mood to watch Feel the love PV and Merry-go-round looks better than the single version, but yeah, still boring.

Yeah and i even thought that PV's from LOVEagain era were terrible except Song 4 U and Missing but this is just one big meeeeeeeh:eviltongu
And what's with that shorts Ayu's wearing ???
Just doesn't suit her at all

I like the PV :D It's fun!

Lelio T_T

but I like new Mgr

Lelio may end up being one of her cheapest PVs ever >>'

I hope XOXO and Angel won't be nothing like that.

Lelio… It's fun but the effects look cheap. Frankly, she can't pull off the 'cool and dancy' style IMO. It just looks dorky on her :laugh

Wow, she looks so ridiculously sexy in that short white top and skirt thing! The lelio PV could have been much better but its alright. I like all the different colours, but needed a bit more ayu and less dancers imo

Hm, with Verbal in the new version of MGR they removed the slight meaning of the single version. And I don't care about Ayupan.
I do hope Angel and XOXO will be nice. Angel might be from the snippets we got.

PV ruined the song, my Lelio ((cried))
It's very Namie's love game mixed with in the spotlight in cheaper version.

The editing isn't really that cheap in Lelio outside of the the copy & paste 'clone' effect IMO.

Lelio pv is hot, Ayu looks amazing!. Kind of reminds me to Get Up & Move! from Kumi.

Lelio is like a mixture of Namie's Yeah-Oh and Heaven with a bit of Rihanna's Rude Boy lol, it's not bad.. Just not what Ayu should be doing, girl can't dance. She did look extremely hot tho!

I prefer Feel the love Album Version PV than the single-Version.
Merry go round... no idea.... not better not worse.
But Lelio.. sorry.. it is terrible. Reminds me on some Dance-Flore-Videos from the 90th.
Her silver dress is also really bad. How older the becomes the dresses becomes smaller.
I also think, she should not dance.. sorry.. but she isn't a good dance. And.. she is over acting when she wears the silver dress.. like in Green.
Hope the other PV's will be better.

I don't know what were you all expecting.

FTL new PV is what I was imagined. Not her best pv, but entertaining.

I expected new Ayu stuff from MGR, but... anyway.

And Lelio PV is funny. Yes, cheap, but who cares!? I wanted to dance as I saw ayu doing those moves. It's funny. Just what I expected as well...

lol Lelio is so bad it's good xD it would be cool if for once she actually did some choreography, like in Real Me. Honestly? as i said before avex spent all the funds on producers sand Namie so there was barelly anything left for PVs for Ayu lol... Good thing i am not expecting anything good anyways xD

well what do you epect with songs like that, really xD it's a party type of music everyone was craving for so long, you won't get PVs anything like Alterna or Ladies Night, just accept the fact already lol

Maybe I'm the only one but:

I'm in LOVE with that hot and sexy ayu in Lelio PV.

Maybe it looks cheap but it's funny and I love the way she moves and she looks.

You are not the only one, :luv2 I love the pv as well.

Yeah I also like the way she moves lol Especially because it's the fact she isn't a great dancer like Kuu or Namie. Anyway, what did you expect anyway? It's a dance tune, for god's sake

I like it. It's a nice change after all the drama PVs she released so far since Love songs hahaha
It's not her best and I expected some more dance but oh well, I think Ayu just wanna have fun xD

This FTL is so much better than the previous one, Lelio has good concept but it's too chaotical and it seems like repeating itself every few seconds but she looks cute in that blond wig.

Don't really care about Lelio it's so gaga-esque

It's easily done, I've only had a year of training and I can easily do anything that's in the video if not more. The only thing is that it takes some time if you're doing it alone, but other than that, nothing fancy here.

I like it though, if I can ever forget ayu's fashion fail. Wth is she wearing seriously?! But it was nice seeing her dancing.

I'm starting to warm up to Lelio's PV a bit. It's so bad it's good? :laugh

Couldn't resist making 2 gifs~
http://i.imgur.com/oa5umhu.gif http://i.imgur.com/2XGBRlz.gif

^thats what i said, it's so bad it's good xD

What the hell is she wearing. PUKE.