^ also she's an old lady so lol that's the mentality of japan....

naked dancers video? As in ayu's dancers? :eh:

LOL And Erika Sawajiri gets all kinds of hate just because of the "Betsu ni" comment. Oh Japan :rolleyes

I think brener meant was that all info will be available on the "everything will be up" part. LOL Ya'll being too critical guys. Its really funny how active some are when it comes to pessimistic ideas. LOOOOOL

Ayu sales are dropping because she is old for jpop (and pop music in general) standarts. Every time someone over here meet someone from Japan and ask them what they think about Ayu, this is the reason given: She is old. Unlike Namie that wasn't on the public eyes for almost a decade, Ayu pretty much was being shoved on people's face all the time until 2010 or 2011.

Any other reason given over here is just her western fans being overly creative.

how does being away from the public eye make everyone forget how old you are?? her TK era will never be forgotten and she will forever be associated with that. that also didn't stop her agency from pushing the ~20th anniversary~ celebrations two years ago.

i'm not sure how she wasn't in the public eye either because during her break the rules - style era she was still constantly on high profile TV shows and had numerous CM/advertising deals. then of course by queen of hip-pop things had already started to turn around.

Exactly. And by the way I'm not answering those kinds of comments anymore, such a waste of time. ;)

Her sales sucked, she was touring halls because she couldn't really fill arenas and she went from being on TV everyday (literaly) from getting some tie-ins here and there, she was basically a 2nd tier popstar and "has been" was constantly used to describe her back then. And I don't really get why you are talking about the 20th anni thing, that was AFTER she was back on top. Also, unlike Ayu, she had a streak of actual controverses that almost destroyed her career like the pregnancy, shotgun wedding and divorce followed by custody battle, and her mother's being killed by her uncle.

About Ayu, the longer you are around without any pause, the older people feel you are. Considering Ayu already has 15 studio albums, that her peak ended more than 10 years ago and that she was shoved down the public's throad until 2010 or so, yeah, she for sure feels way older than Namie for the teenagers that remember her being around when they were kids but that have no memories of Namie's peak because they weren't born at the time. And those are the people that really buys music, between 14 and 20 years old.

Just wanna say that I'm in Japan for over 4 months now and every time I mentioned Ayu is my favorite singer people commented "she's really famous", seriously. Of course they're talking about her past famous status, not so much about how she is right now, because most of them don't really follow her music and know exactly what she's been releasing, but no one told me she's old or not relevant any more, because what they remember when they think about her, and therefore and told me, is how famous she is/was.

In fact, so far the only Japanese who told me he really doesn't like Ayu (he was about my age, 20-something) also said it was because his sister is Ayu's fan and she listens her songs all the time, so he can't stand Ayu's songs anymore (which I can understand, because I'm the same with my brother's favorite band that he used to listen all the time out loud), so it wasn't really a bad thing, it's just a brother x sister thing, and his sister loves Ayu :)

Of course I'm not saying that's how every one sees her here, maybe I'm just lucky I only met people who have no problem with her (except for the guy that had the Ayu's fan sister), but I just wanted to share my experience that is not nearly as bad as what people tend to say about the general Japanese people view of Ayu.

3rd Week #31 with 2,922 copies sold

4th Week 1st Day #25

Girls just wanna have fun... that's all we need xD

Must admit I was expecting more, but well, tough week..

3rd Week

Position: #31
Sales: 2,922
Total Sales: 48,339

Yeah you're right we should all be active and unrealistily positive. Let's just all ingnore the fact and be optimistic. Let's just pretend ayu is saling millions and it's super popular!! Yaya go ayu :eviltongu

*sigh* Let's hope she makes it to 50k at least.

The total as of now...

Love songs 272,653
Party Queen 148,290
LOVE again 88,825
Colours 48,339

About how long she's been in the industry... gosh!
I remember I found out about her right after CAROLS was released (or right before MY STORY) and I though "I've missed so much of her!"... and now I've been following her for most of her career lol

To be honest, I wouldn't mind much if she retired for a while. But for real. And maybe come back with a (last?) bang for her 20th anniversary or something.

Why does she have to retire? There's still people like me who like her and want her to continue. If you want her to retire, retire yourselves from being fans.

Woah, that's nice! :0 Maybe people just tend to bring in the negative stuff! XD

Yup, I'm always up for more Ayumi - can never get enough :)

Amen !!!! :love

Now she isn't super busy like before, she is just releasing an album per year and maybe a single. She has time with her husband and she does what she likes.

I discovered Ayu with Five so I want so much more of her. I´m buying all her discography and stuff... I don´t want her to retire.

You're funny. One doesn't even need to ignore the facts just to be positive honey. Its just some people tend to look a bottle "half full" than half empty. I hope you get that, than just being sarcastic just to fit in LOL

I don't want her to retire either! I am fan since memorial address, snif... :(

Some people complain without having any idea of the current sales situation for female solo artists in Japan, Ayu's current sales aren't bad at all LOL

:yes

^Look at Ai Otsuka, the sales for her last album are really sad :(

^ Yeah, she sold only 4k on the first week, and she was still in #22... Imagine all other artists who had their new albums under hers. There are so many artists that don't sell even 1k on the first week, and people still talk like if Ayu's sales are the most depressing thing when she's actually about to pass 50k lol

^ I really don't understand why Otsuka Ai lost so many fans during her hiatus, it's such a great loss for the J-Pop market =\

And that's why retiring for a while isn't a good idea for Ayu either.

Well, Ai's sales are consistenly falling since her debut... And she still had to release something on the actual moment of sales...

I kinda like it... I think Ai can explore a lot of possibilities she couldn't because of the obligation to the market.

Maybe she should retire to enjoy life with her husband? I don't know... that's usually why people get married and stuff. Or do we have another divorce ahead?

^Do people retire once they get married on your country? :P

That's not why people get married, nor is marriage a reason to retire.
She can do whatever, even if she decided to release less often or only produce things in LA and not work in Japan as much. And I only say that because she moved.

Divorces can happen for many reasons. Even if you're a huge celebrity, people don't just retire from activity completely when they get married.

The only difficulty I could see her facing is being active in Japan.

At the end if the day, she'll do what she thinks is best for whatever it is that she wants.

Expecting women to retire once they marry (and divorce if they don't) sounds wrong for me in every level.

^ Couldn't agree more.

This!


Honestly, if Ayu would be a man, nobody would even think about retirement and everyone who would say something like that would be laughed at.

Retirement ? No, I think she can take breaks or mini-hiatus to enjoy his husband and her L.A. life.

I thought we were talking about Ai Otsuka, but the same goes for ayu..

She is already having little breaks between her releases and the tour this year was pretty short! I believe she's enjoying her husband xD

Alvin just posted this on his instagram, could someone translate?

"NEXT Plus One x ALVIN GOH Weekly Column Issue 13 featuring The Revolutionary 滨崎步 Ayumi Hamasaki!! Check out this exclusive 2 pages special in my weekly column featuring Ayu and I talking about shooting her new CD cover "COLOURS""

Today
50 - Ｃｏｌｏｕｒｓ AVT 14/7/2
浜崎あゆみ

kinda huge drop on the 4th Week :~

#48 today
48 - Ｃｏｌｏｕｒｓ AVT 14/7/2
浜崎あゆみ

Colours charted #1 on G-Music Taiwan Chart, #2 on 5music Taiwan Chart

Small clarification: these rankings are for the J-Pop/K-Pop chart.
She's #7 on G-Music's "Combo chart"!

I hope Colours can manage to sell at least 1k this week...

^ yeah... it needs less than 2k to reach 50k, but I guess it's gonna take 2~3 weeks like this >_<

UHQ CoLOURS booklet photos from facebook.com/alvingohsg

^thanks!

AMAZINGGG

7/27 #44
7/28 out of top 50

I thought this booklet was amazing. But that quality just makes me feel blown away

4th Week
Position: #62
Sales: 1,486
Total Sales: 49,825

Btw Colours is still at least today #30 on recochoku, I wonder if it's good since it's almost a month old already. =)

^ Colours is also #30 on Oricon Daily Chart today!! =)) I'm so happy xP

It's a weekly chart though :D It's been out of Top 50 of the daily chart for a few days already...

Better than what I was expecting! And that you :)

60k is really hard !!

Even 55k seems difficult -__-

I never said that she should retire BECAUSE SHE'S A WOMAN.
*ultimate facepalm*
But actually, that's exactly what MOST Japanese women do once they get married, and it's one of the things I hate the most because I lose sight of singers and such I usually like.

I admit I worded my post wrong, so...

Showbusiness is a very demanding place and the Japanese one even more.

What I simply said is that maybe, MAYBE, she could just tone it down (yeah, even more) and try enjoy life. Isn't she supposed to be in the "honeymoon phase" or whatever? Why's she working so much and not enjoying that?

To be honest, I don't get the whole idea of marriage, and much less when a couple's been together for less than a couple of years, but... whatevs. I think her workaholic attitude is going to come in the way again if she doesn't change something.

Anyway, 50k should be reachable, but I don't think she'll go much further with this album.
I still don't get why the tour was scheduled to end when the album just came out. Who the hell decides this? x__x

OMG i'm so happy for the chart run of this album (by 2014 standards lol) I can't believe it went up again.

the album booklet photos are amazing!!

It seems she's perfectly balancing personal life with her work. She's not really working that much... Yeah, she probably dedicated some time to the album, photoshoot, PV recordings and the tour. But now that it's over, she's free to enjoy her personal life.
I see no reason for her to slow down her work, she isn't doing that much recently.

I agree. Like she's always in LA. Even in between the tour dates. And not exactly spending that time working.

Isn't there a new deji diary of her in Hawaii too or whatever. I thought I heard about that before I heard about the numero photoshoot. Though that's in Hawaii right?

Idk, from following her, it's been clear that she hasn't been working much and just doing whastever. That deji diary at whatever tropical place a while ago was probably her little honeymoon.

I sincerely hope she's jotting down thoughts & feelings to use as lyrics later. Her songs have often seemed very forced over the last few years; like even when they were honest you got the feeling she was sitting down & saying "Okay, song lyrics..." and partly reusing old phrases & thoughts in order to get the song's story told. Like she's REMEMBERING feeling things, but not actually FEELING them as she's writing, you know? So I hope she's writing things down AS she feels them, so she can turn them into lyrics later. Maybe not in a structured setting, but writing things down nonetheless. It'd be nice for her lyrics to feel like feelings more often again.

Idk, I feel like her lyrics lately seem like things she would feel and stuff lately. Even if not all of them are things she's going though at the moment. Especially RnRC, Love songs, and Party Queen. And even Love again, though to a lesser extent to me because I'm not as familiar. And then Colours. They're just kind of different. And I feel like, some of those things can't be related to as easily by some fans as maybe some of her earlier lyrics or expressed as well. Especially if they're similar to any past feelings, it may be hard to express without rehashing. With all her albums though, I don't think she was necessarily feeling everything as opposed to remembering.

Hello new me is one of those songs where it really seems like she's was really feeling it lyrically. But not every song is like that. And I think she's always had songs that are more like that and some less. I think the way it's delivered influences how it seems it too.

I agree. I could see it being hard for not to feel as if it's a chore and not necessarily her way of getting some relief. I too think her lyrics are too "themed" in a certain way recently.

In other news Itano Tomomi sold 700 copies

Remember when everybody was paranoic and bashing ayu because an AKB girl was about to outsell her?

I remember someone even said that Itano album will win in the long run hahahaha

Speaks volumes about Ayu's current popularity when some of her fans are worried about a newcomer. :D

Those pictures are absolutely gorgeous. I like when she does pictures in that style.

Do y'all really still need to make rude, unnecessary comments about tomomi and ayu?

We all know where their popularity and sales are and and it's fine. Nothing negative especially for fans who still like their stuff

i reall like this album but i feel like its just missing something...
I cant really place my finger on it.
I would love to know how well this did digitally

I dont know if any of you guys are aware if this but we're facing this week one of the poorest weeks ever on Oricon Album Ranking, the #1 will hardly hit 15k... That is pretty sad.

Yeah GIRLS' GENERATION will take the #1 spot for second time in a row

A newcomer who was part (if not the face) of the most succesful girlband at the moment. Yeah, right.:rolleyes

Colours is #65 this week, sold 1,022 copies and brings a total of 50,847 copies sold so far :)

The face was Maeda Atsuko.

Itano Tomomi was heavily featured, but that's it.

Idols don't do that well once they graduate from their group. It didn't happen with anyone from Morning Musume (not even Maki Goto) and it won't happen with anyone from AKB48 (Maeda is more focused on acting than singing).

Yamapi and Namie disagree...

There was no way to know how good Tomomi would do before we actually saw the sales...

But Super Monkeys were not a typical Japanese girlgroup like Momusu or AKB48 and the primary focus was lying on Namie from the beginning. Super Monkeys never were really popular and only the first three singles were released under the name Super Monkeys. After that the next two were released under Amuro Namie with Super Monkeys and the last two were released under the name Amuro Namie alone. And most of the time the other girls were just featured as background vocals. The label just realised that the group woudn't be a hit but Amuro had potential.

YamaP was able to make a solo career without NEWS because of the same reason Namie was never just another member of Super Monkeys. Boygroups don't have this whole graduation thing going on so he was able to make himself relevant over a few years within the group.

But bands like Momusu and AKB48 are based on a concept that makes its members totally irrelevant and just wants to introduce new members as soon as the others become boring. The only one who was able to make herself a little relevant was Goto Maki, but even she never got real fame outside of Momusu.

So I think one can't compare Amuro Namie or YamaP to members of Momusu or AKB48, because the initial situation is totally different when you're a member of a group which is based on a graduation concept and not on let's say five members which won't be replaced.

They all are/were idols groups, even if the structure was far different than AKB48. And even if AKB48 and Momusu has tons of members, there are always those who get the most attention, and as a consequence get to sing the most, appear more on videos and most likely to be part of different units. Mari Yaguchi is a good example of someone who was the focal point of one of those massive groups, to the point that she still is (somewhat) relevant as a celebrity to this day.

So glad it passed the 50k mark finally!

It's NOT the same: SUPER MONKEYS was "Namie Amuro and some backdancers" like D&D which was "OLIVIA and some backdancers"

AKB was not Maeda and backdancers, there was a plenty of other members which can, at least, compete with her in terms of popularity, singing lines and PV spotlight.

^that was my point ;)

I'm no AKB fan and I watched the new Tamochin PV out of curiosity. gotta say I understand no hype about her, because imo she has no voice and appearance or charisma, and the PV looked like a Namie Amuro pull off. moreover, her outfit in the PV was also Namie-Amuraa style and it was so obvious I cried.

Maeda Atsuko seemed to have enough popularity and a good start but then she quit and started acting...

I don't want to go OT but in defence of Tomomi she's a great dancer, she does have talent differently from many other acts imho. I like her a lot even though i never believed she could be a threat to ayu or whatever XD this is not meant to hype the ayu/tomomi fight discussion! But she does have talent, I hope she can be recognised a bit more in the future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y46PdMiLLe8 <

For some reason, being a shitty vocalist seens to be a pre-requesite for being a big jpop star.... :P So, this probably worked on her favour.

To be honest this isn't great and she definetely doesn't show any "talent", but it's not bad either - it's just basic (talking about her dancing, her singing is real bad). I mean, I could just as well call Ayu a "talented" dancer, she isn't bad but also just basic.

I'm really frustrated about the trend to call basic idols "talented"... -.- Maybe I should consider a career as an idol too, because I'm as basic (or "talented") as 99% of this idols.

Tomomi just doesn't have 'it'. I watched one of her videos and she had no charisma or presence. Bigger problem than her singing or dancing, because she's not alone in Jpop by being bad at them.

5th Week

Position: #65
Sales: 1,022
Total Sales: 50,847

For those that don't know.. Sorry for the delay, I've been busy with school

She's like ayu in the sense that people buy her music partly because she's a fashion leader, she has this kawaii image, attends to brand events and has CM tie-ins with fashion brands.

Imagine how untalented idols are nowadays that Tomomi Itano is considered to be talented against them

And she loves Namie and ayu that's why her looks are similar

6th week

Position: #95
Sales: 704
Total sales: 51,551

Numbers are really low this year in Japan :\ 700 copies for a top 100 release is really sad

^I feel the same but I think it's better because the market it's not so collapsed and we get more sales updates for artists like ayu

I pretty much shy away from everything AKB48 (shying away is the nice way to put it, honestly) but I actually didn't hate that performance. She's cute and I actually liked her voice decently. Did I love it? Nope.

I see people like her and just wish they'd push A LITTLE BIT harder...try to become better at singing or try and have some creativity. She's like a blank canvas of a pop star... She could become much more interesting if she makes the right choices...

Colours debuted at #58 in South Korea according to Gaon Monthly Albums and sold 142 copies in July ^^

Good for ayu!!

kawaii image?really?
I do not get Jpop nowadays, I swear ;)

I like Tomochin a lot because of her fashion diva image, and her songs are REALLY good. Her dancing and singing are not that good, but she definetely has a popstar aura around her. xD

Colours is just 2,373 copies away of reaching Koda's last album

May I ask source please? (:

7th Week

Position: #103
Sales: 670
Total sales: 52,221

yay!! another week!! just 1,703 of reaching Koda's last album

Weren't Koda's final sales around 60k?

Really?? According to generasia Bon vonyage sold a total of 59,176.
It also says colorus sold a total of 52,221. I don't know much but doesn't ayu need to sell 6,955 copies to reach kumi's album??

Actually, I'm just hoping that Colours can outsell the mini-album "again" at least.

oh in some site I saw she sold 53k lol