[Andrenekoi]

^To be fair, it's far easier to execute a concept when it is limited to how good someone looks while taking photos. It's like saying "oh, but that person executed that glass of water better than that other one executed that berries smoothie".

^^Yeah, Ayu sold a lot between her debut and 2000 (even if her best selling release was actually from 2001), but so were half of the 10 best selling albums in Japan. Part of those huge sales were due Ayu's popularity, and part was because she (and Hikki) were lucky enough to get big during the peak of the japanese music market. She obviously started (very slowly) to sell less because the public were losing interest after A Best and it can be said that RAINBOW was the last album released during what we could call her peak, but she still sold well enough to have albums among the 10 best selling of the year in the 2nd music market of the world for 6 years after the end of her peak and some of her signature tracks like evolution, M and Voyage were all released during the 2000's, and it was during that decade that their influence were felt.

It's a very simple concept: Ayumi (and Hikki, and Shiina Ringo, and Britney) can't be considered an icon from the 90's because her real impact wasn't felt during the 90's, as her releases that had that impact debuted on the very final period of that same decade on the first place. It's like saying a song released in december of 2015 that becomes a huge hit playing all over the radio for months was a 2015 hit based only on when it was released and not on when it was playing.

Namie on the other hand peaked halfway during the 90's, and her influence was all over the place during 5 whole years of that decade.