[Milox]

You came to the conclusion that it is because of her PVs? Seriously?

She has alot of crappy PVs. The PVs actually have very little to do with why she became so sucessful.

3 simple things:

1.- Lyrics

2.- Fashion

3.- Tie-Ins

Her lyrics were the reason why she is known so much, her lyrics are usually very personal and in some times they share thoughts and feelings that many people have. Those were reflected in the teenagers of japan back then. Thanks to the huge popularity of her persona she was able to make herself even more popular due to everyone wanting to imitate her, therefore every company wanted to use her image for their products. Of course, Avex took advantage of this and gaved permission of her image and they would use her songs on the countless CMs she has done.

Japan has alot of artists, and everyday there seems to be a new one coming up. Ayu was in pretty much every important product and company, therefore the promotion was huge.

The problem with Ayu's "decline" is that her audience has "grown up" and while her music has matured somewhat, she is in an odd place where her older fans are either still with her or have "moved on" to other things. But she isn't really making "new fans".


On the Utada thing, Lyrics are also one of her stronges assets. Hikki doesn't has horrendous PVs like you say, some are even better than Ayu's. Also Hikki is very popular due to her fluent english/japanese, her mother was a popular singer aswell. Had good promotion fromt the start. And perhaps most importantly, she is like nothing else out there, making her a completly fresh and new artist since day 1.
The fact that FoL got insane sales could be because of many things: 1.- was her first real single after quite a while, making it a very anticipated song. 2.- was a good song 3.- had one of the best tie-ins in her entire career

But honestly, her sales aren't that far from Ayu's if you take into consideration that Ayu releases so much in so little time unlike Hikki