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Originally Posted by immel
Ayu is still in "that place", definately. Atleast that's how I felt it was like when I was in Tokyo for two weeks, came back 5 days ago. Her album is still the highest selling ones, her singles top the charts for weeks, numbers doesn't have anything to do with it. As I said in an earlier post, buying a CD today is not the same thing as it was a few years ago, artists will have a very hard time to ever get those, insanely high, sale numbers again. To this you can also add piracy. Well, Ayu was "it" back then, she is still in a position that no-one else has been able to reach in Japan. I doubt that, when Ayu is gone, someone will make it to this position again, in a very long time. My guess is that she will always be remembered as the number one, untill someone manage to overtake that place in history.
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I totally agree, And I don't think that time will come untill a next "golden age of idols", like the one that spawned akina nakamori, seiko matsuda before and Namie amuro, Ayumi hamasaki in the late 90's. If one takes a look at the charts now and compare to the years around 2000 the change is obious. Female solo artists are really fading. I think the only company that has been able to keep the popularity of their females is avex with acts like Ai Otsuka and Koda Kumi. Both hello project and Giza used to have really popular artists that always appeared in the top ten with their singles and usually appeared in the top 3 with albums. There are tons of examples, like Aya Matsuura, Rina Aiuchi, Ami Suzuki, Mai Kuraki, Utada Hilaru etc. This is also very much true for the all girl groups. I guess Ayumi was the first one to start the "more than just a pretty face"-trend, idols with more qualities than medicore singing and being pretty in CMs.