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Connected is the exception that proves the rule and is indeed one of two reasons I said "almost 100%" lol...
For one thing, Ayu did have more or less direct communication with Ferry Corsten when creating the song - they were actual professional buddies for a little bit, and he'd already composed the song ("The Love I Lost") and reworked it & sent it to her as a demo, INSISTING that she be the voice on the track. This wasn't ayu seeking out a collaborator, this was someone seeking HER out - and this is a producer, someone who personally only takes care of instrumentation and mixing, seeking out someone who he knew could legitimately contribute something to a framework he's already laid down. He had a track, and he could just hear Ayu's voice on top of it. THAT was his vision for the track. And then Ayu wrote lyrics based on how she felt about doing the collaboration... Being Japanese, writing lyrics as a message to a western person, she represented Japan by using wordplay in a unique way (a way that was unique even among Japanese lyricists - I have been listening to J-pop a long time and I haven't found another song that uses alliteration yet!) The best collaborations challenge and bring out more talents from both collaborators, and I think Connected was great for Ayu.
Ayu's more recent collaborations have been her seeking out producers that she thinks have an appealing sound, or who she thinks she should work with based on their success as pop producers. She said before "Colours" that living in LA, she wanted to take the opportunity to work with producers in LA. Who she worked with was probably based far more on how free their schedules were than what she wanted for the sound of each song. She doesn't appear to have "vision" for a good deal of this stuff... She seems to just trust that it'll all work out because these producers have been so successful, and make music that's enjoyable to listen to. On the other hand, you get collaborators like m-flo who deliberately looked for Ayu to help them with "My Way" and then she tapped them for "Merry-go-round." I do think "Merry-go-round" is the superior track between those two, but I think the potent message of My Way is made FAR better by the fact that it's Ayu delivering it, even if Taku's production isn't as beefy as I think it should have been, and the emotion that the piano loop creates is diluted a bit by the track's generally weak mixing... My point being, Ayu & m-flo had each other in mind for those tracks, and you can tell. Ayu's other collaborations, based more on convenience and availability than artistic intent, are much much much weaker and I think if Ayu sets out to just "do some collaborations" in general, it ends up falling incredibly flat... but if Ayu writes a lyrical concept and thinks "I need a melody from such-and-such, I wonder if they can help me out with this" it'll turn out much better.
But given her incredibly fastmoving schedule, I'm not thinking that'll ever happen.
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