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Originally Posted by Delirium-Zer0
I absolutely think she changed in a way I found unfavorable, but she came back up from it in some ways.
"RAINBOW" was a maaaaaajjjooorr disappointment for me personally. One of the things I loved Ayu for back in the day was not using English in her songs the way most jpop artists did. It almost never happened, and I loved that she was expressing herself honestly and sticking with what made her comfortable. Ayu was personal - she wrote for herself, and about herself and her friends. After her trip to HK for uraayu, she realized she had listeners who spoke english and suddenly felt the need to cater to them. This, in my opinion, was a bad move - she was suddenly writing for us, but for most of us, that's not what we wanted. It cheapened her influence on us, it made her seem less genuine. If I have fun watching a bear do his thing at the zoo, I don't want him to start posing when he notices me. It's cheesy. And that's what Ayu started to do, which was disappointing.
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I think what people forget is that A LOT of people hated RAINBOW when it first came out. I, personally, wasn't a fan of her yet but I knew a lot of people who were and stopped being a fan because of this album.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Delirium-Zer0
Her other problem since then has been her insistence on sticking with alot of the same people over time. Many people who she's worked with have been dismissed over time, and good thing too - not that they were bad, just that their time was over. But she should have switched graphic design companies ages ago. She should really replace Peco as a backup vocalist since, whether you like her or not, she's not a good choice to back AYU. Her voice is just too different.
In any case, she needs to surround herself with people of different backgrounds and mindsets. Co-workers aren't supposed to be friends, they're supposed to be co-WORKers. But she keeps them around as her family, and creative energy gets stale. When she shifted people out more often, her sound changed more often.
She's trying way too hard to please other people - her staff "family", fans, etc, and as a result she only takes creative risks occasionally.
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THIS! Like most artist will only work with people for like an album or 2. She's had the same staff for a long time, not to mention instead of finding new "ground-breaking talent" she been frequenting the same Composers/Arrangers since 1999 which results in very boring songs. I mean seriously does need to keep working with CMJK, HIKARI, DAI, & HAL?
I think she's really blurred the line between Ayumi Hamasaki "THE BOSS" and Ayumi Hamasaki "THE FRIEND." She probably doesn't want to fire any of her staff because 1. she's grown too close to them 2. She doesn't want them to be out of work and 3. She doesn't want to fire them and have them hate her. I think it's pretty ridiculous how big her entourage is. Even big-ticket western artists like Beyonce or Mariah Carey don't have entourages that size.