ayu in straits times article [Who will ascend the throne?]

[luminaire]

I'd like to state that the person who wrote the article was, in all likelihood, the person who referred to Shiina Ringo as Shino Ringo and called Tokyo Jihen Ringo's backing band in another review under the same column two weeks ago or so. If they don't know their stuff, then obviously they're going to make some glaring errors, like the "La La Love Song" bit, when it's supposed to be "LA LA LA Love Song". And it isn't even a new song in the first place, it was from a tribute album to Kubota Toshinobu released LAST YEAR. Stupid, stupid retards. (I actually wanted to email them to correct them about the Shiina Ringo bit, but that would have been rather facetious and conceited on my part, I gathered.)

Anyway, I violently disagree with the review. One, BoA's best album has sold around 700,000 copies since debuting on the Oricon Charts 2 weeks ago - and a difference of 100K is a lot, from the "800,000" they claimed. And her lower sales figures are not due to sameness of sound, otherwise Ayu wouldn't be shipping a lot time ago. Neither would a lot of J-pop artistes be. It's due to the increasing usage of cellphones and all in Japan, and due to rampant piracy as well. What utter rubbish, "sounding the same". Meh. "Unshakeable success"? Sales figures for Ayu aren't exactly "unshakeable" as well, seeing as how "MY STORY" broke a million in 7 weeks, which is like 7 times the amount of time "I am..." and "Duty" took to break a million.

And puh-lease. Ayu's lyrics are some of the best out there. And if you think that's worth mentioning, how about the fact that she did composition and arrangement on this album as well? And she doesn't do trance-dance music, mind you.

And as for the rock thing, may I say that Ayu has been toying with rock ever since "SURREAL" and her albums starting from "I am..." onwards all had a rockier sound than "A Song for XX" and "LOVEppears". And as far as I'm concerned, she hasn't reinvented herself in a long, long time. And BoA toyed with electric guitars in "Rock with You", which ended up tasteless and utterly bad.

As far as J-pop reviews are concerned here, if they're written by anyone who makes serious errors in their writing, then they aren't worth reading at all. I don't even think they listen to the albums before writing.