[Andrenekoi]

Originally Posted by orbitalaspect

I understood that, which is why I wrote that I think Ayu did follow a trend: LOVE. LOVE LOVE LOVE. FEEL THE LOVE-GO-ROUND. It just really, really shows a lack of diversity in the topics she's singing about these days. I'll give you that MIJ and Colours were different, and I think that's why I still look at Colours as one of my guilty pleasures. (And because I honestly love that Ayu did a track with RedOne, and that LICO and her did a not-so-boring PV for once.) My idea of not being a product is evolving the creative outlet. Dan Brown isn't only as good as his first novel. Britney Spears isn't only as good as her first two albums.

I didn't get the comparation with Dan Brown and Britney Spears. They are both pretty much the definition of product artists xD

I understand that not every album is going to land -- it's bound to happen at some point that every artist will flop a studio album -- but I think having 7 straight years of that is a trend. In analytics, we generally look at anything abnormal in data that happens two or more consecutive times to be "trending," meaning the probability that the newer data is similar to the older data is ~95% if 1 abnormal thing occurs, but scales to be <90% (or outside bounds for being "significant" [correlated]) after 2 abnormal things occur back to back. Ayu released Love songs, released FIVE and then did Party Queen. And then did A SUMMER BEST. And then did LOVE, again, A Classical, LOVE again... So, at that point, it wasn't just a couple "different" releases, it was clearly a pivot in the decisions with Ayu. But think back to when Ayu suddenly dialed back the activity in 2006, releasing only Startin'/BTB... and BLUE BIRD. Then suddenly Secret goes from mini-album to full album, and even after that, there's no new single until July 2007. That was another time Ayu clearly pivoted in her decisions, and one time a lot of people said, "Oh, she's taking a break." Well, 12 years is a long break!

When we talk about trends on marketing or cultural production, we talk about stuff that tend to sell well/grab attention due to the current state of art. Ayu isn't following those as close as Namie or Utada right now, even if she is following those from a degree, and always did.

I get worried about things like this because, as we saw with the release of L, Ayu just stopped caring about releasing really any singles. And those were a huge part of what kept people coming back, even when it was her 5,601st winter ballad or she looked dead inside on the cover [Sunrise/Sunset anyone?].

You are worried about her as a product in here, as sales and the public reaction to her are your worries.

To me being an artist isn't chipping away at things that make you "artful", such as releasing a single or two every year or not copying your CDL performance for the next year's tour. It's not removing all the interludes from your albums, or dialing back the creative album covers. It's not a total of 3 whole pictures for the entire album booklet when she's done entire photobooks on a whim. Ayu says more product to me today because she's literally doing the only thing that makes a lot of money: touring. There's no new music, no attempt to promote when there is new music... the album art is half-assed, the albums went from 16 to 12 to 13 to 10, 10, 8 [WTF?!] songs, some of the songs became copies of other songs from the year before, it just puts it out there without directly saying it: "Not making an effort here... but come see me on tour! I've got A~20th POWER of MUSIC citronella candles for summer! A-YU-MOSQUITO-PROOF...?"

I'm sorry, but the stronger the identity of an artist is, the most common it will be for they to be repetitive, because you are the vision of the same person behind everything. It's far easier for Namie not being repetitive because, as her producers even said recently, there's little to none of Namie, the person, on her releases. Also, the amount of interludes or beautiful picutures aren't really what make something artful. And worring about promotion is a worry about Ayu as a product.

And that's the other thing. Andrenekoi, Ayu albums have never just said one or two things until Love songs. That was the first time Ayu only had one thing to say on an album. And then on FIVE, she only had one thing to say. And then on Party Queen, she only had one thing to say [but to be fair, she had been drinking.]

I don't want to be rude, but if you read the Party Queen lyrics, or the Love Songs lyrics, or the Love Again lyrics and only got 1 thing each, or worst, 1 thing in all of them, I recomend you trying it again, cuz you did it wrong o_O If having an overall theme bothers you, you most likely shouldn't like RAINBOW or Duty either, because them both also have unified concepts through them.

You know, the effort clearly went down. And the willingness to even try at some things, even for the people who were clearly not ready to let go, it just disappeared. But she's still got a new tour every year. And she's still doing the CDL. They just look exactly the same now. So, what's the point in buying both DVDs if the tour is just "A 2018 CDL... The Tour Edition"? Or if the next album is just "MORE LOVE songs again" featuring 6 original songs and 42 remixes of "Happening Here"?

I'm glad you see some art, but I just want to point out that AHS has become a ghost town compared to what it was even 5 years ago. My old best friend just stopped listening to Ayu. He had no clue she was still releasing stuff after Love songs. And this was the person who OBSESSED about this when I first met him. Like, he carried (miss)understood around the mall, not even listening to the CD, just carrying it around in his hands like it was a second wallet.

How much of the public stayed around over the years isn't really a good way to measure up how artist she is, really, as more commercial musicians overall sell way more than the ones with the most depth :B Also, it's just natural people slowly turn away from any artist as the years goes by. Namie isn't strong right now because she kept her 90's following, she is strong becase she found a new following over the years, and the same can be said about pretty much any artist who was able to retain their popularity over the decades.

Even Ayu has some pretty young people on the audience when you watch the DVDs.

About eh CDLs and Tours being alike. Why the hell would she waste her time producing a hyper complex performance to present it for 2 or 3 nights and let it die? It's is... kinda stupid? It's not like she was ever the biggest concert DVD seller out there or that most of the public who consumes her will watch both the CDL and the Tour. It's also important to remember her core audience is Japanese. We, as international fans, are pretty much an accident. :B For a japanese person who doesn't buy her dvds, it's nice watching an already tested and improoved performance live, as there are way less tickets avaliable for CDL than there are for the tours. Even a Japanese fan who watched the recorded version of the CDL but didn't watch it live (what is VERY likely) can use it as a promotion to get interest in seeing the same performance live, what are 2 completely different experiences.

She isn't catering to us, she is catering for her Japanese public, and she would be dumb if she tried the opposite considering there wasn't that much of us even when she was at her peak.

Also, the CDL performance usually only have the performances themselves thrown up together, while the tour is where there's more effort on giving them an actuall concept and linking one to the other in order to create a narrative.

I don't think her life as Hamasaki Ayumi, the Empress of J-Pop, is uninteresting. I think it's unreasonable to tell such a short story over almost 50 original songs. Just for the record, Ayu put out GUILTY and managed to say far, far more on her 9th album, so much so that if you compiled Ayu's 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th albums, together, you'd get about the level of complexity found on GUILTY or even NEXT LEVEL. That's just such a huge dip, I'm surprised it doesn't stick out to you that that seems a bit... off... for someone who's known in the industry as a workaholic and couldn't quit when she went deaf because it was not the "professional thing to do".

Funny enough, I find both Guilty and NEXT LEVEL to be among her less inspired works to date as albums. They were from a time she was releasing a lot of seasonal singles that were more or less safe sales and as a result the albums as a whole were very, very messy. You did got complex tracks, but the complex tracks didn't communicate with each other in any level.
About her personal life being or not being interesting, or she having other stuff to tell, there's no way for us to know that as none of us know her. Maybe she have the most boring life ever.

But, seriously... what is Ayu experimenting with? How to turn one thought into 7 songs and convince people that's the new "studio album" in 2018? How to do the same aerial performance for the 6th tour in a row? How many more overdramatic reaches can one male dancer fit in during during the tour performance of "BALLAD"? I sound really cynical, sure. But I don't see where any of this "experimenting" is...? Sure, MIJ is different, and Colours is also different.

If you think Angel, Game, Marionette, Brillante, endless sorrow and kanariya performances all look the same, I would recommend you to watch them again, aparently you did it wrong. The choreography isn't the same, the aereal equipament isn't the same and use in the performance isn't the same.

If you can find the time, take a moment to go back and watch the following videos back to back [no breaks allowed]: Don't look back, MOON, crossroad, Virgin Road, Sweet Season, Last angel, Love song, do it again, progress, beloved, and how beautiful you are.

And then go back watch the following videos back to back [no breaks allowed!]: HANABI ~episode II~, forgiveness, No way to say, Moments, CAROLS, HEAVEN, Pride, rainy day, JEWEL, momentum, part of Me.

I picked these sets of PVs because they are very similar to each other in style and song type. I'm not going to point out what's so different about the first set because I want to see if you can see it as plainly as I can. [I'll give you a hint: Count the number of scenes in each PV in both sets.]

More or less scenes don't think anything more or less artistic? And she has experiemented a lot more on a technical level lately, in the sense that she is trying new technologies (like that camera from the shitty NaNaNa PV) or filming technques that aren't frequently used in the mainstream (progress).

None of the videos you pointed out as "the good ones", maybe Part of Me and Moments aside, are remotely experiemental or risky and I dare say, even very creative (maybe that horrid Santa from NWTS is :V). They are all VERY beautiful, but they are all also very standart eye-candy pop music video.

Don't look back, crossroad, Virgin Road, Sweet Season, Last angel, Love song, do it again, progress, and how beautiful you are, all either have an interesting level of depth for a pop music video (like the reflection on her own conflicts about her own career in the first 2 and Sweet Season, the desconstructed narrative on the Love Songs triology, or the social commentary in hbya, etc). You can understand way more about Ayu as a person through progress and through JEWEL or something.

Just curious whether you think the whole 5 minutes of crossroad's PV is more or less an experiment than alterna.

None of them is in any level experiemental, are they? They both deal with a somewhat similar subject, her views of herself as a popstar (a recurrent theme of her videos since the A Best incident, maybe), taking completely different takes and views on it. I would say alterna reveals way more about Ayu's perception of the industry, while crossroad reveals way more about her perception of herself as a pop icon.

The CDL and the Tour DVD are practically down to choosing which camera angle you want to see the concert in. Have you seen the Tour of Secret? Or the 2008 ASIA TOUR? Ayu used to ride on a damn ship and wear a pirate costume. Does she even actually walk the entire stage these days? I feel like every performance she's in the same 10 foot space she started at when she walked on stage.

Again, if you know she will repeat herself (and considering she started doing that almost one year ago, it's very likely) and if you think it's way too repetitive why don't you watch just one of those? I mean, nobody is putting a gun in your head and forcing you through the CDLs. They changed purpose over the years (and they may even have been extinct), that's natural considering her current concerts are way more complex from a performer point of view and everyone has MORE choreography and acting.

You miss the props, but from a performer point of view it takes way less effort to be taken around on a giant ship than it takes to actually learn choreography, the simpler that choreography is.

As a performer, she never really made as much effort during her whole career as she done after 2008.

You seen to link artistry with big concert props, luxurious booklets and pretty music videos. That's ok, it's your take on it.

But, by these standards, nobody in the industry has as much artistry as Katy Perry.