Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai - View Single Post - a-nation 10th anniversary for Life information thread [I]
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Old 1st August 2011, 04:56 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrenekoi View Post
At this reply I need to remember that Ayu is not a cellphone... We are talking about an artist here... a performer, songwriter, concert and recording producer... We have tons and tons of artists who base their career on what people want to listen, jpop is full of them, as is pop anywhere else in the world...

But this is not how Ayu runs her career... She usually releases what she feels like to, what she feels she should release to better fits the moment in her life, in her career and in her country... And even if she does have her formulaic releases, mostly a summer track and a winter track every year, her albums and concerts tend to have a closed concept, where even if one or another detail could easily fit more than one era, the whole thing is different from the rest.. And this is something she would never be able to do, if she was trying to satisfy her consumers by basing her works on formulas, instead of basing her works on a high quality standart, that is what she tries to do..

Again, I'm not saying everyone should love everything she does, I myself hate RnRC and Secret for example, and I'm not saying she should tolerate is just because it's Ayu...

But really... having this amount of disappointment because of a 6 tracks setlist from a summer festival? Saying she should be trying to please us cuz we consume her work? There's no artist in the world that can live totally alienated from their public, but at the time an artist starts focusing their whole career into pleasing this public by releasing exactly what they think the artist should, the thing that made this artist being interesting in the first place is killed.

Some (if not most) of Ayu most celebrated works where unexpected to her fanbase and general public alike.

And just to finish my big post Considering how this year tour worked, there's a big chance that the a-nation setlist will not be the same at every date, maybe not even her collab... and that would be really interesting to see...
But the form I'm talking about is not to sing in this way, or sing this kind of song, but the form I'm talking about is singing her solo songs just that, solo.

But I digress. I think Ayu understands what's going on from her TA diary. I'm not saying for people to attack her, of course not. It's just constructive when we offer sane and valid criticism of her work, so she can also grow and evolve as an artist. I love when she does things that she loves, because it usually turns out really grand. But sometimes it doesn't work, because as she said herself, she's not perfect. And let's tell her when it's not working, because she needs it. But let's do it in a way that will not create this chaos and crisis over a 6 song setlist. But even though it's only a 6 song setlist, when Ayumi Hamasaki doesn't do many public appearances, just her tours, then her performance at A-nation becomes more important to her fans than it might actually be.