[orangeakira]

I hope I can word this nicely without getting disliked.

Ayu really doesn't have a nice voice. She'll never be on the same level as someone like Adelle or Utada. I didn't start listening to her from the beginning because of her vocals. I got into her for the entertainment. The crazy music videos, the diverse songs, the amazing photoshoots.

If I were to go to one of her concerts, it'd be for the entertainment, not the vocals. I'd go for the costume changes, and the special screens, and the songs, and the energy, and the overall atmosphere. It's not just her voice that draws me in, it's the whole performance. She can lip sync all she wants. It's a minimum aspect of the concert, it's not going to deter me from attending.

I'm 99% sure Utada never lip syncs at her concerts, but a part of that is because she's not rushing around with 15 different costume changes, and isn't dancing around, and interacting with backup dancers, or performing around a pole, or on a chair, or in a pool of water hanging from the sky. Hikki can really sing and she's never had to rely on anything else. But what ayu does isn't a bad thing. It's just that singing isn't the number one priority at one of her shows. Not only that, but because ayu is moving around so much she needs to save her energy.

Ayu has always been for the entertainment value, and she's always done a fairly good job at that.

As long as she sung it live at some point I'm fine with it. If she starts miming the words to a studio track with studio vocals and it's blatantly obvious that someone put one of her CDs into the speakers and hit play, then I'd have a problem.