Funny thoughts/mistakes from your Ayu fan newbie days...
 

I was just looking at the "best ballads from each album" thread and noticed how some people didn't order the albums chronologically (and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that), and it reminded me of how I had NO idea what order Ayu's albums came out when I was a newbie. I ALWAYS screwed Duty and LOVEppears up and for some reason thought that LOVEppears was her first album. :thud I was a stupid newbie. :laugh I had no idea when any of the albums had come out. I remember looking at the I am... album in the anime store and thinking, "WOW!! This album just came out!! How on top of things I am!!" -- this was around the time of the MY STORY release, mind you. XD Worse, that I had been a fan of hers since RAINBOW released, so that just goes to show you how long it took me to figure out all her albums. :headache

I also distinctly remember looking at pictures of other Jpop artists and thinking she was them. :laugh

umm i saw a video of About You and i was searching everywhere for which album it was on @_@...searched for like a week, till i realized there's a thing called wikipedia

i didn't know ayu had an album called LOVEppears..i thought it was a fan-made album :roflmao

The first pic of ayu I saw, she had blonde hair
and obviously her eyebrows were the same color duh XD

at first when I didn't notice that her eyebrows were the same color I knew it was fake
but when I saw her eyebrows (I didn't know that you could bleach and change the color of eyebrows at that time...it's not really common here XD) I started questionning myself
really for a couple of minutes , in front of my computer, I though ''wo wait, aren't asians supposed to have black hair as natural color? IS SHE NATURALLY BLONDE? IS THAT POSSIBLE?!!!''
the worst thing I think is that during that couple of minutes I was starting to believe her natural color was blonde ... DUH :faint :laugh

when I think about it I can't stop laughing, what I though was so stupid :roflmao

My favourite one will always be "OMG BUTTERFLY!~ *squee*"

'Nuff said. :laugh

Internet is vital for J-pop fans... I didn't knew anything really until I found wiki.theppn.org eneabba.net, and some forums

I thought Ayu was a natural blond...

That she was fluent in English. I mean, look at her song titles.

I think there were some songs I downloaded named "ayumi hamasaki" that weren't really her and I'd listen to them thinking it was her ahahha I would also think ayu had a PV for every single song she had made (excluding remixes obviously).

I thought she was just some low-key performer with low budget products. That's because when my friend first introduced me to her she showed me a pirated version of (miss)understood CD only.

Boooyyy, was I wrong.

I thought Ayu was a bit of a skank.... because I saw the Duty cover and I was thinking "What is she wearing"!!! Now I know better... :)

I thought she was a lesbian. But I still could be right.

Uh oh,, I'm still 50:50 about that, :P

I first saw Ayu in M pv,, she was singing in front of a church,,
so I thought she was a religious singer or something,,

I thought Hanabi was in I am... and Hanabi II was in the next album xD

Initially, I've always wondered who CREA is..the name 'CREA' stands out whenever I see the name of the composer..I thought that this composer is amazing since he/she composes M, evolution etc which is extreme nice.. Didn't know who CREA is until I read it in Wikipedia that CREA is actually Ayu.. I thought she only wrote lyrics, never did I knew she composed so many great songs using CREA

i thought the song "rainbow" was in the album, "rainbow"
and i always thought LOVEppears was spelled LOVEappears

I thought she was bald one time, because she always changes her hair style so I thought she shaved off her hair and wear wigs to make life easier. (is embaressed LOL)

I thought she was an angel
^____^


..


whut? o.o

I thought 'Trauma' was called 'Chobits' but that was er a big tag mistake in a download site... =.="

I actually thought Naturally and appears were the same song. I saw it on a site long time ago. But then again, how can a song have 2 different names..

I thought all the songs in A BALLADS were their original versions.

And I didn't know the difference between singles and albums (artists in HK don't release singles) thus I thought Ayu released a lot of 5 song albums. XDD

It took me like a month to tell her voice apart from keiko's in a song is born(first song I heard from any of them). :thud Hahaha

Whenever I saw pictures of her I could never recognize her because of all the different hair syles and colors and fashion choices. She changes herself so much!

I got REALLY confused when I saw that picture of all the ayu-mix 2 personas together. I wondered whether Ayumi was actually a band lol

LOL Adorable!

I just get confused with her album's XD

I ALWAYS forgot to include RAINBOW, I don't know why

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/6...behikkiia9.jpg
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/c...jpg/1/w245.png
Whoever's mistake this was on Google images left me dying of laughter. :laugh

I'm a fan since '04 and it was the longest time before I knew she was dating Nagase. I think I "discovered" it in about 2006! lol xD

Another thing is when I used to get her confused with other artists who looked similar.

When I first was finding out about Ayu I thought her albums were: LOVEppears, A Song For XX, Duty and finally RAINBOW.

O yeah! I can completely remember that. I have searching for ages for that song, what never exist.

I thought Ayu had a song called 'night of fire' cos it was on my PC (I didnt know ayu that well)... but I think Kazaa mislabeled it...

I first found her when I watch her perf doing the Trauma dance. I think it could be in 2000 but I first watch it in 2004. Silly me because thought that it was her latest concert.

My first PV of Ayu I ever watch is Evolution that I first heard on the same year I found Ayu. And I thought it was her latest song too!

And the very stupid thing I could think of Ayu when I thought that single and album is the same thing. I couldn't differentiate both things.

After I bought A BEST 2 -WHITE-(My first Ayu), then I know most thing about her until now. What a very silly newbies~~~~~

:D :D

I think I had the worst mistake ever. LOL

i always used to mistake LOVEpears with LOVEappears when i first got into Ayu.

i still pronounce it with a very silent "a" :roflmao it's just easyer that way :P

oo got a new one, well i was interested in ayu, so i searched "ayumi" in youtube, but what i didn't know is that there's no PV of ayu's on youtube

so i found a video called cutie honey sung by ayumi lee...so i thought she was ayu XD

one big thing...I downloaded this song labeled "Ayumi Hamasaki - Daybreak"

except it was sooo a fan version of daybreak lol but it took me FOREVER (like 1-2 years) to figure it out :laugh

I wish I still had the file...because I actually prefer it to all the other daybreaks lol

I also used to mix up I am... and Duty ALL the time.

When I went to download songs, some of them wouldn't be hers. I didn't know all her song titles back then... so yeah. I also thought SEASONS was after rainy day.

I also didn't know she wasn't hugely (word XD) popular. >.>

The first performance I ever heard of Ayu's was a not so very good performance of UNITE! on some TV show....yeah....youtube....I commented and said that she sounded like a high rodent. x_x. whoops.

Same with you,...mainland China

What's more, The Chinese version of "forgiveness" single has a back cover(I think now it's quite unique). So when I saw the next "Now Way To Say" single I screamed: "WHERE IS THE BACK COVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" LOL

i thought "a", "h" and "&" were actually songs and spent about a month trying to find them. then i found out they were maxi singles......lol

it tooks me about a year to know the fact that she is 10 yrs older than me :D

I didn't know what language Dearest was in for like a month.

Same here^^ The first song I ever heard was Because of You in March 2005. And I began to listen to Ayu in January 2006. I thought that Startin' was an old song, coz' of the hair do --> Black Long Hair, similar to her vogue perf' at Dome Tour 2001. And I was searching Startin' on LOVEppears and Duty:headache

Moreover, I was thinking that her last album was Memorial address, when MY STORY and (miss)understood were the last ones.

And I finally remember when I listen to Bold & Delicious for the first time. I thought "OMG she's changing her music style, that's so great for a singer".

XDDDD

I knew ayu during the RAINBOW era so I had the impression that she likes to dye her whole body with colours. =X

Oh..
Chinese stores didn't sale her singles and other stuff (like the DVD and some RMX Albums), but I used to try really hard arguing with the sale assistant to ask her to subscribe some impossible ayu CDs for me!

I even printed the cover images and names on paper in case the sale assistant could not find.........

(At that time, I did not know to buy them in the Internet. So young I was///)

I also thought she was a natural blond at first, but at the same time I didnt believe it. I was so confused to begin with because ayu can pull off blond so well :smitten

Mine would be the following:

* I thought that "A Song for XX" is a genetic thingy CD or a explict album.
* When I saw Ayu on MTV Asia awards, I said to myself "who is this girl?!?".
* I thought that her singles was albums! I said "She was really hard-working artist"!
* I thought that Ayu was really blondie girl or red head.

The first time I ever heard Ayu, or any Jpop, was dearest after an episode of inuyasha. I never watch anime and this was the first and only episode i had EVER watched, and I didn't know that they used Japanese music for the end credits. Stupidly I thought the song was English and I couldn't figure out why I wasn't able to understand what she was saying. I didn't realize my mistake until like 3 years later when I actually knew what Jpop was and finally figured out who Ayu was, I was so surprised when I stumbled across the song again.

LOL I firstly did not understand the double-side singles like 'Bold & Delicious/ Pride' I thought it is one song and many songs were named like that in my playlist but that was before my forum activites since I'm a fan since 2004.

same with me xD

for forever i thought her name was Ayami. i also had no idea how to find out when new materials were released, so when MY STORY came out i was completely shocked!

I tried forever and ever to find the singles for "Ladies Night" & "Because of you" and wat position on Oricon they got....

When I heard my first Ayu-song, which was Dearest, I didn't know it was her singing or even what language it was! Also, my english was so bad I actually thought it was pronounced 'de-a-rest' (like 'the arrest'). :P
Then, when I downloaded a song it said 'MY STORY Classical' on album, and I thought it was just another version of 'MY STORY' and put it under that album too, among the other songs from 'MY STORY' I had...
And also, everytime I heard the album version of Daybreak I actually thought it was a remix (though it kind of is one), and not supposed to be on the 'I am...' album! XD I thought my download of A COMPLETE ~All Singles~ wasn't the real album when I heard Daybreak on it! :o

Among the first ayu mp3s I downloaded were mp3s labeled only as "And then" and "from your letter".... was AGES before I found out I had the Acoustic Orchestra version and dub you crazy mix, respectively :P~

Also, back in the day (like 2000) it was hard to find full albums for download, so you had to put them together based on individual mp3s. I had never seen the accurate track names for the LOVEppears album, I'd only seen the back cover, so I had alot of single versions instead of album versions on my LOVEppears CD-R (WHATEVER "version J", immature "JT Original CM version", monochrome "Original version," etc). When I finally bought the album (well, got it for christmas at the end of that year), I was AMAZED at how different it was. XD

I'm lucky in the sense that with thanks or no thanks to wikipedia , I didn't made any mistakes of sorts :laugh

the bald comment i seen it on UNCYCLOPEDIA

this was the first I ever saw of her

I THOUGHT SHE WAS HOT BUT HAD AN AWFUL VOICE cos
the first album i heard was excerpts from ayu-mi-x III
(idk why but when i later heard I am... song
i took back what i said the i replayed excerpts from ayu-mi-x III I FELT I LOVE!)

Yes, please! xDD :P What made you think that?


I think my most embarassing mistake was mispronouncing "Ayu" - I said it "AY-yoo" instead of "AI-yoo." In my defense, that was before I knew the first thing about Japanese pronounciations.

I didn't know the difference between a normal year concert like the Arena Tours, Asia tours, etc and Countdown lives ^^

I thought they were all the same.



and I also used to believe that the song "YOU" was one of her latest works (this was like at the end of 2006). I thought that YOU came in a same album with alterna, JEWEL, Pride, M, etc LOL

I think that I never thought she had plastic surgery back then, she looked the same to me in YOU's pv as in alterna :S

i bumped alot of old threads on AHS *srry* ^^"
i thought hanabi&hanabi ep2 was on the same album.
also, I thought ppl just wanted to capitalize random song titles or they were typos, so I made every song title more "formal" .. instead of GREEN, i put Green xDD

When I searched for Ayu songs for the first time through some p2p program after I fell in love with Dearest and M, one of the songs that came up was Voyage.

When I listened to the songs I thought someone had accidently put her as an artist for that song, because her voice sounded so low and mature compared to others that were songs such as Connected and evolution. XD I thought the singer in Voyage was some 50-year old traditional japanese singer. xD I'm still pretty embarassed over this. :laugh

I always used to think that she had std wth??:thud
guess that's what holds me back from listening to her until NOV 2008:dead2

Actuality i did not like ayu at first, i was like o gosh her music sucks(i did not ever gave her a chance because i saw that video of ayu the copycat on youtube), after that i listen to her music i loved it ^_^, then i download (miss)understood,and you know how Ladies night, Bold & Delicious, Pride, In the Corner, Every Step, and Beautiful Girl was used of sweetbox's version, well i was backwords, i though that ayu's version where the real version, and sweetbox covered them. lol

I've always wondered why Japanese artists insist on capitalizing random song titles.

the butterfly song~

I used to have many remixes but none of them had any remix tag or so... so I didn't really know which ones were the real and what was a remix :roflmao

Before I become a fan I always thought that she is BEST selling artist every year since her debut and has #1 for every single and album! I was too lazy to go to wikipedia... XD

I downloaded Someday, Somewhere (by BoA) off of Limewire, but it said it was by Ayu. And I believed it for, like almost a year until I got iTunes.

...u mean she's not really a natural blonde??? (well, strawberry blonde)

OMG!!!! I was reading some of the other posts and they were saying that she's not a natural blond! like on the cover of LOVEppears. Then what is her natural hair color???

^ black? like most asians?

Oh yeah, me too. The main reason I hate Limewire...

I thought that the cover of appears is a parody of the cover of LOVEppears at first....= =!!!

I have blonde moments a lot! On the first several album covers I saw her on she had light brown/blonde hair. And then after I knew more about Ayu, it changed color every single and album, so I couldn't tell.

wait... u mean its not?... OMG! I'm so mislead!!!

People say that LOVEppears is the "Caucasian" Side, while appears is the "African-American" side.

i thought her name was "Ayami". and the only way i could distinguish her from all her many looks was by her eyebrows... lol!

I thought A BALLADS was her new album after RAINBOW but I saw the tracklist why sooo many old songs.
I've just realized when I regster in forum and i knew the answer then

I could not see the different between single and album before.. I thought why she's very fast release album and why the tracklist is only few song included with remix and same tone..

LOL

Not really newbish thoughts but when I was indifferent to her, I thought all her songs sounded the same and that she did her vibratto thingy too much XP

When asked which country in the world would you like to visit I said Hawaii...

xDDD Thats a great post xD

Sorry for bumping, but I really want to reply xD
I do really have so many silly mistakes during newbie days:

1. I thought all of her CDs cost 10,000 yen (I was convinced that I would never afford one)
2. I didn't know CREA was Ayu. My brother told me CREA was Ayu's band members (Yocchan, Enrique, Shingo...) and I was pretty convinced. I was really shocked when I knew CREA was Ayu.
3. I watched For My Dear... PV, at the 'heaven' scene, Ayu's hair was kind of blonde. I thought she put the PV on hold until she dyed her hair blonde in 2000 and shot the PV again.
4. I only watched NEVER EVER & UNITE! TV performances (which she sang the short version) and never heard of the full version. I was completely shocked when she sang the full version on Dome Tour 2001. I was like, "She extended the song?"
5. I thought A BALLADS covers were photoshopped. That means, both of the Ayu's are real Ayu.
6. I was really scared of ourselves PV until I knew the powerful meaning behind it.
7. It was pretty unusual for me that Ayu never included the songs' title into the lyrics (meanwhile it's very usual for Chinese songs). "Why did she pick this title, but never sung it in the lyrics?" And I tried so hard to listen if Ayu actually sang the word 'Trauma' in the song 'Trauma'.

omg :roflmao

I thought she was dating Gackt, the first time I ever saw her was in the Christmas song she did with him.

Now I know they are really good friends.

But at the time he was being very gentle, of course he was just being a gentleman.

- (I discovered her in 2012) I thought ayu was much more younger (in her 20s)
- I thought Rainbow was her best selling album
- I thought Party Queen was western-sounding style

Huh? Am I missing something here?
I thought as well they were photoshopped covers.
Then, how were they made? Please explain to me :(

haha, this happened to me.

The very first song I ever heard of hers was Memorial Address on a Fullmetal Alchemist amv. I loooooooved the song immediately but I didn't know who she was. I looked her up and saw a picture of her from the music video of Ourselves and was like, "nu uh, not getting into goth music."

Obviously I had way different tastes then because I listen to tons of Visual Kei music where the guys have a tendency towards goth-ish, or dark make up.

Another mistake I made, which I REALLY wish I hadn't done was not keeping track of what year it was when I first got into her music. I honestly believe that it was probably between Memorial Address and (miss)understood... but I have really no idea.

I first heard about ayu back in 2003 when I went to a river beach (we say "prainha" here in brazil, which is kinda of a beach but not in the sea) with my friends and family. There was this brazilian guy that recently had came back from Japan and was using his iPod, I asked him what kind of music he was listening and he said Ayumi, but I didn't ask anything much because he had this stuck up personality and I tend to avoid talking to people like that. Anyway, I thought "Ayumi" was a rock band until I read about her on Veja, a brazilian magazine, a year after that and discover that she as more like a pop diva. lol

I didn't know the difference between single and album until HEAVEN's release #killme

Well that's nice :laugh, instead I thought (for a very long time) they were brother and sister or relatives at least lol.

My other big mistakes are about:

- the Butterfly song. Such a classic~
- I believed she was half american, after I watched Real Me PV. Since she was singing in english, I thought she was fluent in english too. Oh lol I was so young and naive.

When I wasn't particularly interested in her music back in 2010, I watched a performance of A Song for without paying attention to the title, and I've spent like a year trying to find out the title of the song. It was thanks to AT08 that I rediscovered it.

I thought JEWEL was a single, and I've been wondering why a song with a PV wasn't released as a single. I also thought JEWEL's PV was the most expensive ever made in the world. :laugh

Always back in 2010, I thought A COMPLETE was a compilation of all her songs, so I didn't need to look for her previous stuff. Luckily, watching concerts made me realize that many songs weren't on the A COMPLETE, but only the singles. Clearly I didn't/didn't want to consider the rest of the title/discography. I've been so stupid~ :laugh

-I thought the three songs on H had music videos, but then I realized that they are only CMs of some products.

Not really a newbie during that time but i lived abroad during My Story ~ (miss)understood era. I had no Idea Ayu released a single called Heaven. I just found it on the net and DLed it. All those times i knew that HEAVEN starts from the part after the bridge when percussions comes in! LOL

When i got back to japan I bought the single and was really jumping when I heard the first part of the song which I thought never existed Oh gosh

Umh.. the other one (straight hair) was Ayu's double, right?
Or am I wrong again :grumpy

Back in 2008 when I first discovered her, I didn't really understand that she was a J-POP legend and was shocked at how much she had already released. I remember thinking, "She's releasing stuff way too close together!" At the time, I was used to release schedules of an album every 2-3 years from my favorite artists.

When Mirrorcle World came out I wasn't really a huge fan of ayu. my friend sent me a link to the Mirrorcle World music video and I thought for a while the lingerie scenes were of some random model and not ayu lol. i thought her image was too cutesy/innocent to ever wear anything like that. I was very wrong lol.

The first time I watched Beautiful Fighters I thought it was a super old video. My internet connection wasn't the best at that time so any video I watched was grainy so I couldn't distinguish old from new through video quality.
Song wise I thought Beautiful Fighters was old because it reminded me so much of Boys&Girls, really cutesy!! I really thought the song was released around that time :laugh

I thought that the song Hanabi was actually the song RAINBOW and I didn't care for it at all.

....???


Now I'm confused. I'm pretty darn sure that both girls were really Ayu. ????

I am confused too x_X

I used to...

think WHATEVER remixes by Ferry Corsten were the original mixes
tag mp3 incorrectly (for exemple, for LOVE ~Destiny~ I wrote Love (Destiny) instead)

When I became a fan and watched "my name's women" PV for the first time and didn't know about her dancers, I thought Shuya was actually Ayumi dressed as a man.