I'm not very found of this album to be quite honest, it's actually on the bottom of my personal album lists and promotional tracks aside I tend not to listen to it...
Well... Let's take a look at it^^
The album:
- Considering the amount of personal subjects she goes through in the album, I tend to believe the title isn't album the music genre or a literal circus, but she calling her life/career a Rock'n'Roll Circus. She tends to point the "circus" aspect of her life a lot with her heavy use of clowns and circus related themes during her whole career.
- Even if Sunset is on the 1st half of the album and You were... is on the 2nd half of the album, things are A LOT brighter and more optimistic after Don't Look Back than they were before it, so, maybe she was able to follow her own advice in the end.
- The album mix several elements of british rock music (from the title taken from The Rolling Stones to the Punk rock inspired booklet). On a way, even Don't Look Back hindi-inspired arrangment fits that. Part of the album was recorded at England, and I remember she was pretty excited about recording at the Metropolis Studios, wasn't she?
The videos:
- Both Microphone and Sexy little things videos pay homenage to british aesthetics, the 1st being recorded at famous London locations and the 2nd using mostly Alexander McQueen designs.
- I read once over here (and don't remember who posted it) that Sexy little things showed men dressed as loony
english hunters and women as monsters. I also believe the plug scene that opens the video was meant to represent a rape. It's someone putting a power plug on a socket that doesn't fit, followed by a woman horrorized scream and blood flowing from it, followed by males laughts, so, a comment on rape culture.
- Don't Look Back video has more vanitas elements like the clock and the rooting fruits and flowers that appears in flashes during the video. It's probably the first post peak Ayu song (maybe the 1st since Duty) to talk about her feelings about her era being over, and the 1st video since ourselves.
- Lady Dynamite video has Ayu for the 1st time ever openly and fully taking a position about her gay following. Her art had some homoerotic elements before (like the girls flirting during Limited TA Live) and she represented homosexuality on her work before (GREEN), but the first was at a smaller performance and the second was rather dubious and eliminated from live performances. There were some smaller gay elements through her whole career, but it was the first time she went all the way.
The tour:
- The tour opening makes reference to
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was trendy during 2010, being referenced also by Britney and Glee.
- The backdrop of Microphone made reference to
Michael Jackson's Invencible cover. Considering this was the era dealing with her fall, maybe she was comparing herself to him?
- During Count Down, the song that deals with her deafness, the backdrop from the start of the song shows a neon sign written "showtime" wrecking and slowly going unlit, the "show" part first, them the "time" and finally, "me".
- Don't Look Back performance opens with the dances doing several pretty fakey "magic" tricks, the whole performance have a suntuous palace as a backdrop. In the end of the song it shows that the palace was just a movie set and people starts unmounting it, showing that not only the trick, but everything grand in that performance was just smoke and mirrors.
I don't think this era has a theme from begining to end, she was dealing with several stuff at once and the circus umbrella was perfect for dealing with that much subjects, most of them linked to her personal life strugles.