Well, it has been 9 years. That's a long time tbh.

Wow, never knew Ayu remained top so Long until she got overtake by akb48

Yeah, AKB's singles were crazy cause they are still selling a million each for a while now.

To me this is so unfair, all this solo singers, and then AKB....they are not even in same category.

On the bright side, isn't it amazing that it took over 48 girls to topple Ayu's dominance. That is insane.

I wouldn't call it unfair, as you can see by the list it always had a group/duo. Pink Lady was huge in the 70s and was there in the list for most of the 80s and 90s. DREAMS COME TRUE, SPEED, Morning Musume, all of them were there as well.

The list shows more how stale the industry became during the 00s. Nobody who debuted after 2000 made the list except AKB48. And Ayu's power was very strong for the first 5 years of her career, by that she took over all the other singers.

since we are in a slow news period...

Who remembers the famous beef between Ayu and Coco Lee back in 2002? According to this video ayu kept to herself the whole time and was accused of being "passive aggressive" to coco and her staff... though knowing Ayu, she was probably just being her usual introverted self LOL

https://www.bilibili.com/video/av51271749/

what exactly was the beef? I don't know who coco is and there is next to no English in the video, so I didn't understand anything at all.

Yup, can someone explain the video between ayu and coco? It seem like the video says that ayu was just looking downwards all the time rite...

And I heard sometime like coco’s stuff commenting on the manners thingy.. but I don’t really understand the whole commotion during their back stage.

Promised land CDL is 30% off at cdjapan in case anyone is interested

Just came across to Miliyah’s cover album (both women and men) and noticed that she covered songs from utada hikaru, namie amuro, mika nakashima and koda kumi. I wonder why ayu isn’t in the list and i’m sure she is more than a legend.

Has any female singer ever released cover song of ayu’s?

I don’t know but it seems like she is not allowing people to cover her songs easily ? It’s quite strange even Avex singers doesn’t make cover of her songs beside Gackt but still it’s one her friend so ...

^I know An Youqi (chinese singer) released this cover of TO BE (re-named as "Accompany me") and some idols have sang live covers but I'm not sure if other females artists have recorded covers of her songs (GACKT recorded SEASONS and Ken Hirai recorded Love Destiny tho)

So many people ask me if Ayu is still active...

She’s literally been touring nonstop for years at this point lol.

I guess TV really is an important factor in promotion in japan.

Thanks for the info, the ASFXX cover was nice though!

I was looking on Mercari JP and saw these really cute Christmas boxes from 2002 and 2003. I guess these eventually made way for the Happy Boxes?



Thinking about the Happy Boxes and the anxiety of trying to get them was almost nostalgic lol I wonder if they'll do them again for her in the future? Although with Ayu not really releasing albums and singles I have the money to basically buy most of the items I want.

I feel like we need some kind of encyclopedia of ayu merch for reference lol

Wow definitely have never seen that!

I feel like there’s a span of a few years in the early 2000s where there’s not a lot of documented info lol.

Wonho (Ex Monsta X member) said in a recent interview that his favorite japanese artists are ONE OK ROCK and Ayu (or that he listen to her a lot not sure how accurate the translation is lol) :luv2

https://i.imgur.com/cpKdVd1.png

His taste is so on point!