What do you miss about the old Ayu??

[letter]

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

Well, I may be wrong, but when you make more money than everybody that is doing the same as you, on Madonna's case, making more money on a tour than any other solo act (what included and still includes a lot of it girls like Gaga, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Taylor Swift or Katy Perry... or legends like Michael Jackson, Cher, Celine Dion, Bruce Springsteen... ), this is not failing. =) But maybe our ideas of success are just different....

Namie is having a Dome Tour this year... her 2nd I guess. I hope it's sold out and a complete success, as Namie totally deserves it. It's expected that it will be seen live by +-300k people in total. Namie is at the top of the game, the biggest solo female star in Japan for the moment and celebrating her 20th anni.

If Ayu's tour also attracts +-300k people this year (+-280k is likelly considering the number of dates), her tour will be a success... And she won't be failing this year, again. =)

There's a belief that popularity doesn't mean quality, just as celebrity doesn't mean intellect, and good performance doesn't mean incredible talent. Madonna is rich, Mozart wasn't; she's one of the biggest female pop starts to have lived, he's one of the most celebrated artists in the world. It's a terrible imbalance. I don't really want to get into a discussion about this, esp not in an Ayu thread, but most of today's stars are overrated. They become legends for reasons that are ludicrous when compared to the heroes from the past. You and I need not agree, but I respectfully say that Madonna's lifelong efforts in the field of music are not worth a dime. That's not to say she hasn't worked hard; it simply means that she hasn't succeeded in changing my mind. Why I say change my mind and not, perhaps, "capture my attention" or "entertain" can be seen in this excerpt from an article I was just reading:

As scientists, we profess to the sanctity of evidence: repeatable, unambiguous observation underlies any conclusions we make about how the world works. But anybody who has tried to change someone’s mind, to convince them that a belief held doesn’t match the facts, knows from bitter experience that facts do not act symmetrically. Instead, a "fact" that further cements a current belief into place has much more weight than a fact that contradicts long-held belief.

I believe that the magnitude of many matters in the world is heavily dependant on the perception they're capable of introducing, thus leading to a carefully constructed illusion. The illusion of order and chaos in abstract art is everything (just an example)--Picasso has mastered that, by gaining control over something disorderly, and even still, many believe that abstract art lacks discipline, order, and even direction, which I disagree with. Popular music has all the elements it needs to be popular; eventually, it incorporates something out of the norm and manages to make it universally known, and so it remains in the sphere of the "well-known". Then, more sheep follow. It's a circle. I'm not quite so far away from the topic of this thread. Ayu is, after all, living in these times, so where does she stand in this mess of an industry? I'd say her lyrics have had the biggest impact on people. To touch the heart is one thing, to stimulate the mind is another. To do both, that's success.