I've seen better, I've seen worse. She does look stunning.

Thanx for the link

overall, she did good job, love her vibrations in parts that didn't sound too much.. it's just perfect. she just did off tune for 2 u yeah 4 u yeah part.. aside of that, i love this performance.

What was mika's tweet if you don't mind me asking?

She's drop dead gorgeous. But not to be so rude, is she sick? Her vocals are kinda frail to me. :(

those clothes that the dancers are wearing are exactly the same with the progress performance at KOUHAKU last year

she sound like she have cold or sth
she looks gorgeous, but nothing special, i never been a fan of tv-lives. they sound like a karaoke lives more than performance of big artist.

Interesting! My attitude in that matter happens to be completely opposed to yours. I even dare to say that I prefer TV performances over concerts as they appear more genuine and less showy to me.

During concerts I often ask myself if her vocals are live or playback. This can hinder yourself from enjoying the music whereas TV appearances always seem convincingly live.

She's out of practise...the reason why her vocals were so strong 10 or so years ago is because she was so used to singing live on a weekly basis with support/training..now it's been two or three months since the tour finished ^_^ by CDL comes around, she should be all warmed up and okay ^_^

LOL I just noticed, I wouldn't be surprised if this year's Kouhaku performance is just the same as this live.

Mika took a message that Ayu had sent her privately and posted it on twitter. This was a couple of days after she missed the music station appearance. In Ayu's message, she said that she is sick and can't sing for a while.

I can only think that Mika posted it because she thought that would make people more sympathetic if they knew Ayu was sick? But it actually caused more damage because now it looked Avex/Ayu maybe lied about not being able to make it physically to music station and that the real reason might have been because Ayu was worried about the condition of her voice.

^ They possibly weren't able to take their flight back to Japan as planned because of Ayu's illness, so how come you assume that either Ayu or Avex could have lied?

It's weird how many people here are against lipsynching, but seem to forget that big parts of some of Ayumi's most popular concerts are full playback. Just saying.
I'm glad she stopped lipping recently, her vocals are so much better now than 2005-2009 anyways.

Yeah and you used to be the one who kept pointing it out like it was really important. I don't see a problem with people being against regardless of the fact that Ayu has done it. I am against it, yet I am a fan of hers and I'm fully aware that she has done it so many times.

I pointed it out when people pretended it was live, not when people accepted the playback. So many people here used to pretend Ayumi is a godess that would never even think of lipping and that ignorance and attitude quite frankly pisses me off.
I myself don't mind it much if the rest of the performance is good, I just can't stand people pretending it doesn't happen. Of course the same performance live I always prefer, but Ayumi has good reasons to lip so when she does it well...perfectly fine.

D':

That's totally beyond my comprehension. How can a singer have reasons to cheat on the audience? The usage of playbacks is actually likely to be one of the main factors, people often assume the genre as cheap and trashy.

Don't exaggerating she has never done a concert full playback... Maybe 50/50 but not the entiere show and it's like 3/4 Lives (2007/2008/2009) sorry if i forget something but at this time she a lot of vocal problems & deafness (it's not an excuse but she had a reason)
I don't deny she has lips sync in the past but she never done that before 2006 (maybe one or two time) and has not done this since 2010 ! so there is a reason ! I think ^^

I agree ^^ Like britney spears full playback ...

I didn't. I said that it opened up the possibility for people to think that so it made no sense that she should post Ayu's message. Being sick would not have been considered a valid excuse to miss music station anyways.

Ayu is using halth playback on concerts I think.

I'm sorry, I wasn't being totally clear there. With "full playback" I meant that in a particular song she lips the entire thing, not that the whole concert is playback ;) "Full playback" is just to differentiate from using a backtrack(which is having a playback but also singing live vocals over it, Lady Gaga does that in all her upbeat songs for example) or half-playback(parts of a song are playback, other parts of the same song are live).

Ayumi first did playback(half-playback) in CT00 afaik(not sure which of the two) btw, in Trauma the final chorus was lipped from the studio version, I'm guessing because she's scared of heights and performed that part while hanging over the stage.
The only concerts of hers in which playback annoys me are AT05, AT07 and CDL0809(she just fell and got out of the hospital, so this one is excused for me) - but aside that I think that, given her hearing problems and since hearing is THE most important thing about vocal performance, her lipping a few songs every now and then until 2009 was just fine :)

Britney doesn't do full playback that often anymore btw, she mainly uses backtracks nowadays. She's a weird case, when you watch fan recordings of her tours she clearly sings some songs live, but on the DVD/Bluray you hear the studio versions.

The Mika you are talking about is Mika Nakashima ???