Let's talk about...

[GRACE]

Ugh, this video again =/? I remember this being posted before, but it was while I was a lurker so I never commented on it.

It's true, Ayu doesn't have a professionally trained voice. She really had no musical training at all until Max picked her up. Her family wasn't musical, her Nothing From Nothing mini-album was a joke, she doesn't have the background lots of musicians in Japan have. In all actuality, Max said "Hey, wanna be a singer?" and Ayu said "eh, why not."

HOWEVER, she, like many of the writers whom wrote what are considered the classics, suffered many personal traumas, and as a result, created what set her apart from all those singers who where basically her with different music: her lyrics. I full heartedly believe that it was not her voice that Japan fell for, but what she was saying. Relate able, personal, and, more at the beginning than now, anything but generic.

Ayu, more than any artist, also has an amazing ability to express her emotions through her voice. I find a lot of times, listening to other artist's studio recordings that they're sort of dead, lacking in emotion. Now, they may perform it emotionally, and that's all good, but it's missing from the studio recording. Not Ayu. Maybe it's because her voice is so normal, so much more human than these icons of popular music, but you can definately get the emotion of her songs from her voice alone.

Her voice isn't perfect. And that's another plus about her, I think. The fact that she's not perfect all the time, and that she can convey emotion so well, reminds us that she's human. It's incredibly relate able, and makes her seem like less of a diva, and more like your average person.

The person on Youtube is allowed to have her opinion, and I respect that she doesn't like Ayu, but I don't respect the way she went about expressing it. It went beyond a mere stating of opinion and seriously crossed into bashing.