Colours covers!

[KPL]

Originally Posted by November4

Let's be honest, this release IS quite last minute. We had the songs even before the album name, the remix album is announced a day before the release, the covers 2 weeks before the album, a last-minute tracklist, an incohesive concept because of Pray and Hello new me (though I love those songs a lot).

The same happened with LOVE again: "Lol let's just release 2 mini albums and then suddenly slap them together with some old demo tracks to make a full album!"

Not to mention Ayu flies back and forth between Japan and LA every 2 days. It reminds me of American Horror Story: Coven where they were filming and writing the episodes WHILE the show was airing. Which resulted in a terrible season that made 0 sense and they just dropped storylines midway because the audience didn't respond well to them. Remember Ayu said she was working with western producers, then got a positive response to Pray and she suddenly changed her mind and decided to add more classic J-Pop to the album.

Maar niets persoonlijks tegen Ayu, ik zei het meer in het algemeen over deze release. Het is waarschijnlijk meer avex trax's schuld die een slecht marketing team geeft aan Ayu. ~_~;

If you remember the interviews around the release of Pray, ayu had started the new album long before Pray with a clear concept of EDM-themed album. Then Pray came up, and she decided to change the concept and blend in some old-ayu, hence NOW & 4EVA... As I said before in another thread, ayu has a lot more control over her career than in the past or compared to other successful Jpop artists, so she can be seen a little pushy and idiosyncratic because perhaps she does not rely on the team to polish her product/image any more, which results in hit-or-miss situations, but not necessarily lackluster behaviors.

Releasing the covers late does not mean the making of covers is last-minute. Who says the covers have to be out the moment it's done? Whether or not the tracklist makes sense is a highly subjective thing: to people with preconceived notion of "EDM songs should stick together and ballads should be the last tracks", the official list might be irrational. Yet for listeners who hear the album for the first time, nice surprises and connections might be a rewarding experience after all.

The slow release of information might be due to last-minute procrastination or be according to a strictly followed path of marketing (which might or might not work), but to judge it last-minute may be a little bit arbitrary and unfair.

If we see this whole release as a big picture, the marketing is really quite unusual for ayu (and perhaps the whole Jpop industry). The order of info release is:
-Name of producers
-Song previews and TA Full songs
-Concerts
-Title
-Full PVs for three of the songs
-Covers
-Digital release of new songs Nonstop mix

It's a lot easier to follow a normal path if you want to do everything last-minute (especially for someone who has released albums for more than 10 times) than to design a marketing strategy that is different, interesting, shocking. Whether or not it works depends on the audience, but as a fan I personally see ayu put some work into Colours, certainly way more than into LOVE again.