Why did Ayu become popular?

[colorsofromance]

I was just thinking about the beginning of Ayumi's career, and what a smash hit 'A Song for xx' was. Why did Ayu become so popular then? Meaning, what was it about those songs and that time period (1999) that allowed for that level of popularity?

[Andrenekoi]

Her lyrics were (and still are) extremelly relatable, talking about stuff nobody was really talking about with an aproach nobodoy was really using and even when she got a more diva-like imagem, it felt more like a normal girl who got there, and not like some perfect untouchable idol. Or so I read.

[mizuki-7]

I must say that it was not an easy thing for her because at her beginning a lot of people just thought she was a rip-off of Kahala Tomomi the biggest idol of the 90's with Namie Amuro but young people began to pay attention at her touching, poetic and relatable lyrics ...afterwards there has been the "Ayura" boom (light skin, blonde hair and princess look ) (アユラー) which is the opposition of the "Amura" boom (アムラー) (tanned skin, boots and skirt) settled by Namie Amuro before Ayu's debut ! So firstly she became popular for what she was a girl next door with fantastic lyrics then a fashion icon and finally a diva some years later lol

[Delirium-Zer0]

It's not so much that Ayu was seen as a ripoff of Tomomi Kahala - she was actually specifically sorta "designed" as Max Matsuura's Tomomi Kahala counterpart (since TK was produced by & associated with TK... yup, even her stage name was chosen to match his initials). So TK had TK, Max was gonna have Ayu, and Ayu's image was intended to be sorta appeal to people who liked Tomomi, but didn't want yet another TK family member.

Anyway, it wasn't that people saw through that, it was that right around the time of Ayu's debut, AFTER she had been all groomed & her sound and look had been developed, the media went nuts with the scandal about TK and Tomomi having an affair and doing drugs together.... Tetsuya Komuro had to work for the next couple of years to sorta fix his image, and he was powerful enough that he was alright by like 2001, but Tomomi never recovered really. She seemed to be getting there, and then after Keiko Fujii died she made a really awkward comment about wanting to make a song about it which was just kinda like.... eehhh, no.

ANYWAY, back on topic... "Trust" was Ayu's first top 10 single, and interviews often brought up how her popularity was growing because of its use in an AUBE commercial. She made her hair wavy after she turned 20 (which began more steady appearances as a fashion/makeup example in magazines), so like.... she finally had her own identity as a pop star, but part of that identity was that she came across as stupid. TV & radio talk show hosts would make fun of her being kind of spacy and referring to herself in the third person. Meanwhile she'd frustratedly explain that the album title "A Song for XX" was pronounced "ee songu foo" and not "ah songu foo daburu ekkusu", and the title actually MEANT something, but she was treated rather dismissively and even ignored by the hosts when she did that. You could tell she was trying to go for the "I want fans/listeners to relate to this stuff, fill in the blanks themselves" thing but it was like anyone who interviewed her couldn't be arsed to care.

So the real turning point was probably when the A Song for XX TV commercials started playing - the lyrics to "A Song for XX" and "POWDER SNOW" that people heard in those ads were, well... dark as fxxk. At least compared to what TK's pop princesses were singing about back then. Ayu's lyrics were certainly honest on the singles before the album came out, but they weren't anywhere near the stark contrast to the stuff on the charts that "A Song for XX" and "POWDER SNOW" were. These were wintry, dark, unusual, raw songs, so Ayu's reputation as being the pop singer that every teenager (especially girls) could relate to was thanks in no small part to those ads, and the promotion for the album.

As a way of further distancing Ayu from her image as an alternative to TK, Max instead decided to cement her as "Max Matsuura's artist" by giving her more of a dance sound - plans for ayu-mi-x began well in advance of A Song for XX's release, WHATEVER was released with a remix as the lead track (and the promotion of versions M and J, no doubt, served as a pretty good marketing experiment to see what audiences responded better to), et cetera. Ayu had her own pull to that push as well of course - her insistence that ayu-mi-x have an Acoustic Orchestra disc was no secret and probably helped begin her reputation for being so in control of her own career and image.

So by mid-1999 you've got this pop star who's at one time a poet, a CEO, and a girl-next-door. She gave voice to all the anxieties, fears, ambitions, and hopes every high school girl had at the time. The result was that by the time the Trilogy was released in Spring 2000, everyone wanted to look like her - big sunglasses, long wavy blond hair, jewels around the eyes, peacoats, high collars, bangs... so much of her style was copied after early 2000.

So it's easy to say it was Ayu's style that MADE her popular, but it wasn't that alone... her more unassumingly tomboyish, mature-and-yet-girly sense of style was very individual to "her," you know? That could have backfired terribly. But people responded to who she was & what she was saying far more than they ever responded to any particularly tailored "look" she had. So the style followed.

[DevilsClap]

^ Wow, that's very insightful.
Thank you for saying all this. I always love reading what you write because I feel like I learn so much about Ayu.

[Sandy]

Originally Posted by DevilsClap

^ Wow, that's very insightful.
Thank you for saying all this. I always love reading what you write because I feel like I learn so much about Ayu.

^ This for sure.

I was just gonna come here and say "well, I guess she was at the right place at the right time" 'til I realised how stupid and simplified that sounds...

I do wish to know how Ayu herself would answer to this question.

[tenshi no hane]

^ Actually, she does somewhat think "she was at the right place at the right time" She has stated in older interviews that she's simply lucky that her lyrics and persona resonate with her generation (at that time).

She mentioned this in her recent interview on NHK SONGS 2015 too. Delirium-Zer0 posted subs in the Downloads section:

Commentator: The things Ayu wrote about were the anxiety and isolation that she herself harbored. The girls of her generation sympathized, building her into a charismatic popular figure.

Ayu: [...] when I debuted I'd sing about how I didn't have anywhere where I belonged, and that seemed to resonate with girls who were living through the same era that I was.

Commentator: From "sympathy" to "resonance," and from "big hit songs" to "social phenomenon."

edit: And great, insightful post, Delirium!

[JinHamasaki]

Originally Posted by Delirium-Zer0

So by mid-1999 you've got this pop star who's at one time a poet, a CEO, and a girl-next-door. She gave voice to all the anxieties, fears, ambitions, and hopes every high school girl had at the time. The result was that by the time the Trilogy was released in Spring 2000, everyone wanted to look like her - big sunglasses, long wavy blond hair, jewels around the eyes, peacoats, high collars, bangs... so much of her style was copied after early 2000.

So it's easy to say it was Ayu's style that MADE her popular, but it wasn't that alone... her more unassumingly tomboyish, mature-and-yet-girly sense of style was very individual to "her," you know? That could have backfired terribly. But people responded to who she was & what she was saying far more than they ever responded to any particularly tailored "look" she had. So the style followed.

I love this. I think a big part of Ayu's success was Ayu was such a hard worker. She was basically a nobody - so-so singing skills, can't dance, not tall, not big chested but through her hard work and lyrics people were like: Wow~! She is not even from Tokyo but the "relaxed" city of Fukuoka (kinda like being a Southerner in the US vs New Yorker).

[paper_doll]

Sandy, I was going to say that, too lol.

It's is simplified, but I think it's very true and true for a lot of artists and bands. It doesn't even have anything to do with talent necessarily, it's just the right song at the right time with the right image.

Of course I think there does need to be something a little extra there - good lyrics, charisma, actual talent, whatever - for longevity though. Bless Ayu's little hard workin' soul <3

[pimenta]

Great explanation, Delirium!! You described the situation really well.

I think that besides what Delirium explained, there's also the fact that Ayu was releasing music way faster than other artists at the time, and that got people's attention. In just two years she had released about 13 singles, 2 albums, remix albums... People were impressed with the speed she would release new things, she would be recording songs for a new single and, at the same time, she would be already writing the lyrics for the next one, though Ayu herself didn't really realize she was doing things differently. She said on later interviews that she didn't really understand at the time how other artists used to do things, so she didn't know that she was releasing much more than the average.

And, of course, there's the sound. LOVEppears sounded quite different than the common j-pop sound at the time.

Sometimes I think that a big part of how brilliant her first years' music was was due to how little she understood of music and the industry at the time, which allowed her to make things her own way without trying to do what was common at the music industry at the time.

Originally Posted by Delirium-Zer0

ANYWAY, back on topic... "Trust" was Ayu's first top 10 single, and interviews often brought up how her popularity was growing because of its use in an AUBE commercial. She made her hair wavy after she turned 20 (which began more steady appearances as a fashion/makeup example in magazines), so like.... she finally had her own identity as a pop star, but part of that identity was that she came across as stupid. TV & radio talk show hosts would make fun of her being kind of spacy and referring to herself in the third person. Meanwhile she'd frustratedly explain that the album title "A Song for XX" was pronounced "ee songu foo" and not "ah songu foo daburu ekkusu", and the title actually MEANT something, but she was treated rather dismissively and even ignored by the hosts when she did that. You could tell she was trying to go for the "I want fans/listeners to relate to this stuff, fill in the blanks themselves" thing but it was like anyone who interviewed her couldn't be arsed to care.

It's sad how true this is. I remember reading interviews from that time and they would ask people on the street what they thought about Ayu and people would say things like "she doesn't seem to be very smart" and others would be like "but it's ok because she's pretty". I was quite surprised at that dialog and how people used to see her as a pretty but dumb artist because of the way she used to speak.

[Yoake]

Originally Posted by Sandy

^ This for sure.

I was just gonna come here and say "well, I guess she was at the right place at the right time" 'til I realised how stupid and simplified that sounds...

I do wish to know how Ayu herself would answer to this question.

It's not simplified or stupid because it's a part of the success. It's why when people are trying to reproduce the same recipe it doesn't work because there is always something that changed.

To answer to the question of Why did Ayu become popular? a big multidisciplinary research should be done about the society, the economy, the music, the behavior, the marketing, etc. Because the success is the total of elements and the birth of something isn't separated of the context.
It's why it's difficult to answer to your question utterly as we read only behind the screen of a laptop.

[sitara]

delirium, that was an amazing read! you seem to have quite an insight to her rise go fame
I always enjoy reading comments like that.

I think that really good marketing helped her along as well. being signed to one of the biggest (or even THE biggest?) label is to credit as well. although I don't know if it wasn't really the label who pushed her to release songs this fast? I wonder.

[voltron]

Delerium gave a really, really insightful answer that I think really hits on many of the main points.

I would even build upon some of these other points a little bit. In some ways, Ayu was the perfect un-Idol. She really started toward the end of the Idol age, and she broke the mold so much from what was expected.

Japan is a hugely xenophobic country that is also simultaneously obsessed with Western culture. I also feel like Japan was in a really unique period of time during her career launch. And Ayu was the perfect combination of literally being Japanese, but then also being a "bad" Japanese. I'm not sure if I'm articulating this well, but she did so many things to break the mold -- the mold of the idol, the mold of the good Japanese girl, etc. She was simultaneously this totally relate-able young girl, while also being this aspirational image of breaking the chains of expectation.

Unfortunately I think this same behavior has also attributed to the "drama" surrounding her in recent years, and a feeling of disconnect from the general public. But having visited Japan several times over the past 10+ years, I also feel like the general (young) public has regressed in their world view over that time.

[Sandy]

tenshi_no_hane, paper_doll, Yoake - well thank you! Just after reading the post above mine I felt saying "right place right time" sounded so... well, stupid

It's really a million different factors, and scary really... one year too early or too late and we might not even have an Ayu right now... :S

[Andrenekoi]

Originally Posted by voltron

Delerium gave a really, really insightful answer that I think really hits on many of the main points.

I would even build upon some of these other points a little bit. In some ways, Ayu was the perfect un-Idol. She really started toward the end of the Idol age, and she broke the mold so much from what was expected.

Japan is a hugely xenophobic country that is also simultaneously obsessed with Western culture. I also feel like Japan was in a really unique period of time during her career launch. And Ayu was the perfect combination of literally being Japanese, but then also being a "bad" Japanese. I'm not sure if I'm articulating this well, but she did so many things to break the mold -- the mold of the idol, the mold of the good Japanese girl, etc. She was simultaneously this totally relate-able young girl, while also being this aspirational image of breaking the chains of expectation.

Unfortunately I think this same behavior has also attributed to the "drama" surrounding her in recent years, and a feeling of disconnect from the general public. But having visited Japan several times over the past 10+ years, I also feel like the general (young) public has regressed in their world view over that time.

I feel, based on the way media talk about her recently, some translations on "Maji de", her views on youtube, etc, that they are also seeing her on a better light lately... There's a slow but constant rise on the interest on her as an artist.

[kotora]

there are lots of things..

Para-para dance from Trauma

ayu-mi-x albums and her trance remix

her unique fashion style at the time

she used to have unique nails art in the industry

Her music and lyrics

[Eewyi]

I would also like to add, around the time ayu debuted, solo singer-songwriter acts were hugely popular in Japan, were they not? This also helped ayu to gain popularity. If she debuted now, she would probably drown under idols, since idols are super popular once again. (I also love idols alongside my solo singers, so I don't mean to badmouth idols in general.)

[Delirium-Zer0]

A BUNCH of solo female singers were making their debut around that same time, yeah. The wave lasted a good half dozen years too! Ayu was part of a second wave though, and an EARLY part of it, so she probably was more of like... a contributor to the public realizing they wanted more solo female singers, I guess?

By Ayu's debut we already had Namie Amuro, Shinohara Tomoe, Kahala Tomomi, hitomi, Aikawa Nanase, Matsu Takako, MISIA....

But most of the other female singers in that wave didn't debut until after Ayu did: Shiina Ringo, Suzuki Ami, Utada Hikaru, Kuraki Mai, Aiuchi Rina, Koda Kumi, and Nakashima Mika are, to me, part of that same 1998-2001 wave. I would actually say that wave started with MISIA in early '98, since Namie, Tomomi, hitomi, and Nanase all released their first singles (or in the case of Namie, first solo singles) in 1995, WAY before this whole burst happened.

[Yoake]

I received a mail of CDJapan with this book. 1998 Nen no Utada Hikaru (Shincho Shinsho) by Koremasa Uno.

The description is :

This is the debut book from Koremasa Uno, an up-and-coming music journalist. The book focuses on 1998, the exact year when much-talented four artists debuted: Hikaru Utada, Ringo Sheena (Ringo Shiina), aiko, and Ayumi Hamasaki. He analysis why they have been still much popular with keywords of "revolutionary, revenge, genius, loneliness."

It could be interesting to read for people who want to know more about the subject.

[ExodusUK]

I think the timing of her debut had a big part to do with it. Japan was in the middle of their 2 Lost Decades and teenagers/young adults became the "lost generation". Ayu's lyrics resonated with the sentiment of what a lot of people were feeling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)