First, i should probably start by saying "Hi everyone, i'm new here!"
After reading this thread, i just couldn't help but reply as, aspiring to be in the music biz mysel. I can be a little political on these kind of topics
First a little about me- I'm a 23 y.o male in Australia. I generally despise pop/r'n'b/rap/hip hop music in general because of manufactureism (if you can call that a word) Especially in the west (U.S, UK and Aus) cause to me it all sounds the same, i find this type of music annoying and theres a lot of 'fakeness' about artis like britney, christina, and the like.
Heres the main thing about me- I'm a metalhead! I'm into some of the comercial bands, but also the more underground bands, and theres nothing i enjoy more than puttin on a good metal record and waking the neighbors up
And i'm also an anime and japanese fanatic...which is how i got into ayu. While my tastes are mostly metal, and aside from the genres listed above, I can pretty much listen to anything, and I enjoyed the music from anime so much i started looking around the net for other japanese artists. Which is how a few Ayumi tracks landed in my hands...the first ayu song i ever heard was 'fly high' and since then I've become hooked on her!
Now the other thing about ayu is personally i don't consider her 'pop' as such. She has the poppy sound, but theres this 'hard rock' edge in some of her songs that attracted me. (BTW I also enjoy her ballads, too.) As a result i kinda consider her a little 'metal.' (Thats just personal opinion, though)
Which leads me to the topic at hand. Having brought a couple of her CD's (rather expisively
) I've notice she does write most of her lyrics, and apparently some music (Apparently on my fave song 'Evolution' which for me had 'metal' written all over the chorus
) and thats the main reason shes earned my respect and admiriation. 'Manufactured' isn't really a term i'd use to describe ayumi, I consider someone whos manufactured to (like said here a couple of times) have a song written for her, also a manufacture artist doesn't really have that 'live' vibe in their shows (after seeing 'Arena 2005' i thought the music was awesome, and the stage show made Kiss look like little kids playing with fireworks!
) Ayumi from what i can tell has 95% control over everything, while most overseas artists are really just made up for record companies to gain some cash (I mean....Paris Hilton's coming out with a single! You can't tell me that wasn't done just for money-making interests. I couldn't stop laughing for an hour after i heard that bit of news
)
But keep in mind thats the opinion of someone who isn't in japan. It's a safe bet that if you walked down the street in tokyo and asked someone they would tell you that they've gotten sick of seeing Ayus face on everything. Thats the beauty of ayu for me- I'm probably the only person in my town who has a copy of '(Miss)understood'....and thats why i haven't gotten sick of her.
Sorry for rambling....like i said i can get a little political on this issue!
Anyways thanks for reading. Ayu rocks!!