Ayu ~Anything Goes~ XVII

[DonkeyKongRemix]

Originally Posted by Surreal17

Ayu's version is definitely superior. I love its minimalistic arrangement and the angry rockish chorus. Works so well.

Lastfm tags are so annoying. Memorial address the song has "dance", like wtf. And why every song has to be tagged as "jpop", "j-pop", "j pop", like damn, we get its j-music if its sung by a Japanese artist. Wouldn't be better to name the actual genre or a feeling evoked from the song? Useless.

I've noticed this on iTunes. It makes it pretty challenging to browse by genre rather than having to go through the huuuuuge J-pop selection (which is actually fun sometimes).

[Aderianu]

I think at last years Ayu can spend money only on her tours. But anyway not so much as before. Her goods became more simple, not so various and made in less amount.
Also, she recorded two album (+mini) in Japan, not in LA, London or Hawaii like she used to.
She doesn't have any advertising contracts anymore and sales not so high. Touring is main way to receive money.

I don't want to say that it is something bad, I just think we can't expect from her something grand and huge, like box with cool goods, or first press items... or high budget videos

[truehappiness]

She did do Colours in LA though. Recently, I think it is an effort to stay within Japan. She does go to Hawaii still nowadays but it's on trips with her hubby where work is not going to happen.

I believe we'll get grand stuff for the 20th anniversary. It's just a matter of "when" since all she has to really do is say "I want to do this" and we'll get it. It's just a lot rarer that she wants to do something big as opposed to most of her career where she always wanted to go big until probably 2011/2012 which is when she seemed pretty lost as far as her image went. Magazines especially.

[Gustavopc]

I think it'd be at the very least contraditory for her to say she wants to go back to her roots, show her true self and so on and then go flamboyant on her videos and photoshoots. It's consistent with what she wants to portray and that's good, and that's something I felt like she was missing in early 2010s. I may not like all photoshoots she's done the last years but I still see why she's doing so and I agree with her.

[luna7996]

Doing some spring (technically summer) cleaning I found my old Premium CDL 2008-2009 towel. I forgot how much a love this towel and basically all the merchandice from that CDL. If I could find a frame big enough for it I would totally frame it and display it in my room.

Spoiler:

[//ABEST]

i love that towel so much! best she has ever had for sure i was so sad that they sold out before i got chance to order it

i wonder what happened right after FIVE since her sales dropped kinda tremendously to Party Queen, was it just that she divorced and became a mess? i thought the drop happened after Love songs but i just checked FIVE's sales and they are only ~60k (haha bigger than her overall sales nowadays) smaller than Ls'. i wish people saw her as before

there are times that i don't even listen to her new music (FIVE, Party Queen, A ONE) since i dislike them kinda much but i always listen to her and not giving up on her, just older songs and keep waiting for better songs to come (sixxxxxx & M(A)DE IN JAPAN recently).

time changes people but it's sad

[Aderianu]

10TH ANNIVERSARY

[tokyoxjapanxfan]

She became a tabloid staple and just a lot of weird things started building up. Canceling on MS may have triggered bad press. Then there was the weird TRF Ayu Tohoshinki a-nation thing. Of course the marriage divorce dating dancer dancer who was married then breaking up to have him talk shit about her then re marriage then move to the USA.

I mean I feel like since 2012 was when it started falling apart lol.

[truehappiness]

Yeah, it was okay during Mannie and then all of a sudden... it all fell apart.

[//ABEST]

oh right i forgot that MS incident completely! so people just lost their respect for her

[truehappiness]

I wanna say MS was a teeny part of it and the bigger picture was that it seemed like she was abandoning Japan since iirc she missed the performance because she was stuck in the US. And for a bit she was just in the states for extended periods of time only coming back to work here and there.

On top of that, the divorce with Mannie coupled with the Maro relationship hellstorm, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people started wondering if she was losing control of her life and didn't really bother to keep up with her after that since it was spiraling into chaos and lost faith in her.

[tokyoxjapanxfan]

All of this plus her lack of media presence left people forgetting about her releases.

[280301]

I wonder if Ayu will release more music this year. I am really curious to see where she will go from M(A)DE IN JAPAN.

[truehappiness]

We could perhaps get a winter single like Zutto leading into a spring album.

[ayu-michan]

What was the Ayu Tohoshinki thing?

[tokyoxjapanxfan]

Well one thing was about how she wanted to sing her song with Juno, but because his brother was part of JYJ, the part of Tohoshinki that broke away, the current members of Tohoshinki complained and she wasn't allowed to sing it. So she (with reason) got annoyed.

Japan (and also Korea) have a huge senpai/kouhai culture, so the fact that Avex allowed such a complaint to be listened to caused issues.


Then there was also an issue with who could perform last. I forget why it started, but in the end Ayu performed 2nd to last and Tohoshinki got the closing spot. That only happened once though. This was 2011 and 2012 I believe. Personally I didn't mind her performing 2nd to last because I could leave early lol.

[truehappiness]

Isn't that around the time that Max closed his account due to issues with Tohoshinki fans?

[Queen Bee]

If I'm not mistaken Ayu refused to perform last when she was scheduled to or was refusing to perform at all because the the disrespect was being shown towards her younger and older colleagues at a-nation that year. I also believe she wrote a TA post about all of this when it happened. I would have to do some digging.

[ayu-michan]

Oh I see, thank you for the replies! It's so surprising to hear about this for the first time because that sounded pretty big.

[Faiza]

Can we just talk about how amazing this is? Totally forgot about this performance

https://youtu.be/8NBdws9_AbQ