Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrenekoi
Only if you ignore other variants such as market curve and generation shock. For someone who peaked the way Ayu did and who had constant massive sales for a very unusual time spam, she is actually doing pretty good.
For example: One generation always negates everything related to the imediatelly past generation and rediscover stuff from 2 generations ago, that's why the 80's were so trendy during the 2000's and that's why the 90's are so trendy now. Ayumi is a HUGE icon from the 2000's, probably the biggest one in Japan as far as music is concerned, the teens (major music buyiers) from the 2010's generation will find her tacky and old and will rediscover artists that were huge during the 90's (Namie's and Yumming's revivals, for example). This is a market aspect that can't really be controled. If you need a western example, that's why people like Madonna and Kylie Minogue, who were first big during the 80's got mostly under the radar during the 90's to later release some of their biggest hits during the 2000's. But neither Namie, Yumming, Madonna or Kylie were trying to replicate their past hits, they move on to new aesthetics, something Ayu is doing at least every 2 years. You will only find a handful of artists in the whole world who could actually have two or three decades in a row were they had massive sales, most will enjoy alternated good and bad decades. For someone going through a bad decade Ayu still is out performing most acts and getting gold certified songs from times to times, this is VERY hard to archieve.
This isn't some new artist who needs to have a million seller to prove she is worth of being around (and talking about million sellers, how much newer pop girls who once came to "take her place" are she overselling now? Pretty much every single one who is around for 5+ years), and there's no way to look at her career success and overall impact and influence on the short therm.
Best case scenario? She will become like Yumming and have several good and bad decades over the years.
Worst case scenario? She will become like Seiko Matsuda and have poor sales, but will be regarded as a legend and people will still be willing to spend their money on watching her perform, making possible for her to still out perform tons of younger pop starlets.
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I got to be honest with you, I think you're placing too much credit on an artist's niche and not so much on the artist's overall direction. Watch an Ayumi PV and watch a Namie PV... which artist comes off driven to entertain and impress? I bring up Namie because she's still selling 100,000 DVDs and 250,000 albums... 23 years into her career. So, you know Namie had a wake-up call after STYLE and had to accept that the direction she was taking her career in wasn't working for fans, wasn't working for her, and wasn't living up to her passion.
Ayumi needs that wake-up call. And that's what I'm getting at. If not, she will be just as legendary as Seiko Matsuda fingering herself while holding a Leek for the cover of an album. That's not something I'd want to look back at.
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