Stages of fandom - Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai
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  #1  
Old 16th July 2022, 04:55 PM
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sxesven sxesven is offline
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Cool Stages of fandom

I already asked you about your origin story, but where did it go from there?

I think my own fandom development is a bit akin to the five stages of grief, except inverted, and for 'grief' think 'Ayumi Hamasaki fandom'. If that makes sense (I've already lost track, this made a lot of sense when I was thinking about it earlier though).

Back when I originally discovered Ayu my fandom initially skyrocketed immediately. For the first six weeks after I happened upon the magic that was SEASONS basically nothing concerned me except Ayu. I listened to literally no other music than Ayu; I had my self-made compilation CD and, even more practically, a MiniDisc with some 27 songs, and this was all I consumed for that month and a half. I scoured the web for pictures, collecting them all in a folder and laboriously renaming them to 'Ayumi Hamasaki 0001', 'Ayumi Hamasaki 0002', etcetera - it wasn't much of a filing system, but clearly I was in it for the long run and expecting to amass thousands of pictures. In those days, I could see nothing but perfection in Ayu and her music: every single song was a masterpiece, every picture was utterly amazing, every single fact I gobbled up. While perhaps it bordered on the unhealthy, I remember this time very dearly. I had not really had an idol before (on account of the type of music I listened to) and it was absolutely awesome.

After those six weeks of soaring in the clouds of Ayu fandom, though, I came down hard. One day, after pretty much living and breathing Ayu for two months straight, I just got sick of it and stopped listening to music for a bit altogether (I remember these dark times all too well, it was pretty awful). I couldn't hear Ayu's music anymore, couldn't stand it. I remember listening so much that teeny tiny details started annoying me (the main being the reverse cymbal sound in evolution, but there were others). I couldn't hear these songs anymore - I'd picked them apart and destroyed them in the process. For a bit I didn't touch anything Ayu-related. It was a hefty price to pay for too much enthusiasm. (It made me very wary in later years to become too excited about anything new I discovered and consume it too intensely for fear of ruining it.)

A bit of a cool-down period was enough, fortunately. My fandom resumed and I acquired my first Ayu items, which I think were RAINBOW and I am... (or LOVEppears?) as a gift from my parents for graduating secondary school that June. I joined AHS and got to share my fandom with others, which was fantastic. It was an exciting time: A BALLADS had just released and was still being promoted, & was coming out, the end of the year brought Memorial address - oof, what a time to be alive! I managed to build a small collection of albums, consisting of all the albums from A Song for ×× to RAINBOW, A BEST and A BALLADS, and Memorial address (I didn't buy singles then). Videos for some of my favourite songs of the time - No way to say, forgiveness, HANABI ~episode II~ - were released. The board was in its prime, with a huge community, a lot of activity, contests left and right. I made a bunch of friends through the board and was even able to share my fandom with two real-life friends, one from secondary school and one from art academy, where I had just started that year.

With the release of MY STORY, things took a bit of a turn. While I liked some of the singles (INSPIRE was a bop, Moments I found okay), the album itself - which I had pre-ordered (the excitement!) - I found underwhelming. It planted the first seed for Ayu-scepticism. A key feature of the community populating the board back then was that there were various contingents each with their own outlook - those that found Ayu absolutely perfect, the wildly positives, the moderate and realistic, the cynics, and so on. There was some appeal in the cynic contingent for me - I didn't like MY STORY and became increasingly sceptical of what was to come next. Through certainly no fault of Ayu's, just my own weariness, the result of ruining things for myself through hyper-consumption (is what I'd say in retrospect), she could somehow do no good anymore eventually. (miss)understood? Bah. Secret? Mediocre and drab. GUILTY? Dear lord, must we really? By the time Rock n Roll Circus rolled around, I definitively lost interest. It felt as if Ayu was hopping on every bandwagon in sight (also unfair in retrospect) and lost what made her so spectacular to begin with - that she was so incredibly herself (and so good at it).

I left the forum eventually and moved on to other musical pastures. Ayu became a bit of a relic of the past. She was still in somewhat regular rotation, but I did not move beyond Secret (which, yes, I had come to appreciate as much more than mediocre and drab - in fact, it became my favourite album for a while), listening pretty much exclusively to the first eight years or so of Ayu's discography (though I still did not touch MY STORY and (miss)understood). There were certainly moments my interest revived; however, these merely meant I just listened more intensely to my old favourites. Secret especially, as mentioned just above, became an utter staple. Otherwise, I didn't think to explore what had happened since. I became active elsewhere on the internet on more general music forums and review websites, where I occasionally revisited old Ayu albums and reviewed them. Reading those back, the scepsis prevailed, clearly; even the reviews of my favourite albums of the time are fairly dismissive and speak only to my disillusionment of the time. (miss)understood received quite a beating ('bland', 'mediocre', 'unpleasant'), to name one example.

(To give you the proper perspective on this whole 'waning interest', by the way, Ayu is by far my most listened to artist on Spotify (which I use for 90% of my listening nowadays), so even my 'moderate consumption' still meant she outranked every other artist I listened to.)

For a while Ayu was pretty much off my radar otherwise. Now and then some things came to my attention (the deafness for example, the fact that the albums that were once almost annual events had pretty much slowed to a trickle, and then less) but that was it. Funnily enough, I think I can give credit to one of Spotify's functions for eventually reviving my interest. I was surprised to see Ayu pop up in the Release Radar. It was 23rd Monster, I think (edit: I was wrong, it was Dreamed a Dream). While I didn't find it amazingly exciting, it kind of rekindled interest and some hope that Ayu was indeed still a major player and that I had just not managed to keep up. Nonfiction also came, same story - alright, not brilliant, but good enough - and I somewhat hopefully set out to make up for lost time.

I picked a compilation to get back into the swing of things, and since I love good Ayu ballads perhaps more than anything, I went with the WINTER BALLAD SELECTION, which combined some of my personal favourites (JEWEL, No way to say, for instance) with some new tracks. I was surprised to say the least. How had I discounted everything post-2006 so ruthlessly? I was very wrong, I quickly realised. Various of the 'new' tracks on this compilation quickly became favourites: You were..., which shockingly turned out to be from Rock n Roll Circus, which I had once dismissed outright only for what I perceived to be a silly album theme; Days, from the album I had dismissed for derivatively cashing in on the electropop-trend (this was when Perfume had become super popular). Turned out I was wrong in my own disillusionment. Turns out I had dismissed perfectly excellent albums just because I had ruined things for myself.

And so came a period of reevaluation in which I could judge things in a fairer light. Not to invoke objectivity, of course not: finding You were... rekindled a flame that had been burning all along, the flame of fandom. The revisiting of albums I once didn't think much of (if I even gave them a fair shot) has been a huge pleasure. (miss)understood? Amazing. NEXT LEVEL? Amazing, and also not at all a derivative cash-in. Rock n Roll Circus? I dismissed it for being an idiot myself - it is actually amazing, too. And she keeps on rolling them out, too. I eventually got around to spinning M(A)DE IN JAPAN and was fully taken aback. Apparently, in 2016 Ayu could still easily drop material on par with the material from the period of time I had once deemed entirely sacred and superior of anything else after. Huh.

I made a graph:



Please don't misconstrue this as a negative thread, CELEBRATE YOUR FANDOM!
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Last edited by sxesven; 16th July 2022 at 10:07 PM.
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  #2  
Old 16th July 2022, 09:01 PM
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This was such an interesting read, thank you for sharing! I can definitely relate to many of your points, and I think it's just natural that we go through periods of intense love for an artist and others of complete disinterest.

While it makes me sad to think that, for some months or years, I almost "despised" what some of my favorite artists had released (mainly because I realize how unfair I was to them), I also enjoy re-discovering those songs at a later date and giving them the appreciation they deserve. And since I'm mostly interested in artists that don't release new content as much as they used to, I love feeling like I'm listening to something brand new (even though it's not ).
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  #3  
Old 17th July 2022, 10:21 PM
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sxesven sxesven is offline
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Thanks!

And yeah, haha, I know that feeling, isn't it great? I now fill my end-of-year best-of lists with mixes of new tracks and old, it doesn't matter when it's from imo, if I discovered it in 2022 it's new to me!
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Old 18th July 2022, 06:19 PM
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It was so much fun to read your post! Talk about a trip down to memory lane lol, and it's also nice to see a familiar face from the golden years of AHS I'm glad you were able to rediscover Ayu's discography and to listen to the masterpiece that is "You were...". My mind is blown every time I listen to it.

There are some albums by her that I can't listen to because I'm too used to the albums I love the most, such as I am..., LOVEppears, the ayu-mi-x II albums, etc. Easily my favorite eras. Maybe one day I'll listen to the ones that I didn't care for in the past, such as GUILTY, Party Queen, etc.
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Old 18th July 2022, 11:41 PM
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sxesven sxesven is offline
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Ha, ditto right back, awesome to see a familiar face too, hope you're well!

Yeah, it's been a real pleasure and DAMN, You were...! Jaw-dropping every time.

The feeling you describe I can identify with strongly. I had my selection of albums that I knew through and through that I just loved to teeny tiny bits and I didn't really venture outside of them. I had long formed my opinion of the albums that had came out after what was the golden era for me and I didn't ever expect them to budge much, I'll admit. Quite fortunately, I was wrong!

I've been exploring slowly the albums I missed out on (deliberately or just because I didn't follow actively) and it's been a bit of a journey. (miss)understood I had dismissed for being boring and bland, but it was actually (after the singular success of You were...) the album that got me back into the swing of things and is now among my absolute favourites. I then went back to a bunch of others and found myself surprised: NEXT LEVEL is great (and already has some of my all-time favourite tracks), Rock n Roll Circus is soooo much better than I ever gave it credit for (but these I had already mentioned). GUILTY has been getting regular spins lately - I didn't and don't care for its theme and photo shoot (I say this with all the love I have for Ayu: it's devoid of character, and to me it was really the first album to suffer from this ) but musically it is actually solid old-school Ayu. LOVE again is suuuuper solid. Love songs I already found decent enough in the past but has been growing on me. M(A)DE IN JAPAN is really, really, like really good.

Party Queen, incidentally, I've just been getting into. Thematically and photo-shoot-wise it is probably my least favourite album. I don't like the vibe it projects, just seems a bit trashy, and Ayu is just too good for trashy, haha. The album starts off in that fashion too, imo (first two tracks really don't do it for me) but actually picks up surprisingly well afterwards with some really great tracks (Eyes, Smoke, Magic is a bit unnecessary though). I'm definitely putting it on regular rotation!
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Old 19th July 2022, 08:24 PM
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I would say my Ayu fandom has been pretty consistent except for maybe around 2009 when I was focusing on other artists. The only other period where, although I was still a big fan, felt myself feeling more disappointed was the Trouble Tour era where there wasn't any new music being released and it felt like a lot of the live shows were going unreleased. The forum was getting quieter and the only thing to look forward to was the latest tour setlist.

Nowadays though I feel there is so much more to enjoy with releases and her Insta!

Also thank you for creating all these threads sxesven, I feel you're bringing the forum back to life!

Last edited by mi|kshake; 19th July 2022 at 08:26 PM.
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Old 20th July 2022, 12:40 AM
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lizzylovesongaku lizzylovesongaku is offline
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My first Ayu song was "Dearest" way back when Inu-Yasha was first airing stateside. I was a kid, maybe 10 or so when I first heard it. Inu-Yasha literally changed my life. It almost single handedly got me into JPop, seriously. There are so many artists that I got introduced to through that show that I still listen to today (Do As Infinity, BoA, Namie Amuro), Ayu being the biggest one.

I know for quite a while, I just liked Ayu. I was much more into Utada Hikaru at the time (they're still a very close #2 and I love them with all my heart) comparatively, but I remember hearing "M" and "evolution" for the first time while doing some very limited and outdated internet sleuthing (this was back in the early 2000's and I was a young kid, so I honestly didn't know what I was doing, nor to I really remember a lot in those early years). There was this site that I used to visit (I can't remember it for the life of me) that had lots of JPop songs streaming on the site. It's how I first heard a lot of JPop, honestly. It even had videos. I remember I used that site to look up more Ayu songs and became obsessed with her commercials. I distinctly remember being particularly enamored with the "Memorial address" and "MY STORY" CMs, so much so, that "Memorial address" became the first ever JPop CD I ever owned!

I eventually found an Ayu forum. I can't remember the name, it was either Ayumi Hamasaki-Online or Ayumi Hamasaki-Network or something. It was very similar to AHS, but much smaller. Of particular note was the fact that it had a pretty big download section and this was when my Ayu (and JPop) fandom exploded because I now had access to a lot more stuff than I ever had before. This was right around the time that "STEP you / is this LOVE?" was coming out. It was then that I was not only able to hear a lot of songs I never could before, but was able to follow along with Ayu news (new released included). Up until this point, I considered both Ayu and Hikki as my #1 favorite artist. I realized, however, that Ayu's songs were the ones I loved singing the most, so she she truly became my #1 at that point lol

After that initial explosion, things kind of settled down into more of a calm phase for a good amount of years. Probably from "(miss)understood" up until maybe "Love songs" or so, things were very strong and steady in my love for Ayu (I also joined AHS somewhere in this time lol). I followed along with every release; excitement always flaring up when a new album was about to come out.

Things took a dip between "Party Queen" and "Colours". I still loved Ayu, of course, but all the drama she was involved in coupled with the fact that "Party Queen" and "LOVE again" weren't my favorite albums, caused my enthusiasm for her to wane a bit. Things picked back up again during the "A ONE" to "M(A)DE IN JAPAN" eras, put the fervor wasn't nearly what it was pre-2012.

Things took an even bigger dip in 2017 when all she did was tour, not releasing anything. I completely understood her desire to take a break from recording. She gave us music for 20 years straight. I'm not surprised she got a little burnt out. That said, it was hard not to feel a little disconnected from her. I live in the US on a pretty low income. My chances of seeing Ayu live are pretty slim. My real connection to her is through her music, so it was only natural that things really hit a low point. "TROUBLE" didn't help much either. We all know it wasn't her strongest release. The fact that she immediately embarked on several more tours following it only compounded things.

Since 2020, however, she's releasing new music and my fervor for her has grown quite a bit. I was definitely over the moon with the surprise new releases of "Ohia no Ki" and "Dreamed a Dream" and things only grew and grew with "Haru yo, Koi." and "23rd Monster" the next year. The "MUSIC for LIFE" show really pulled me back in. There was just something really beautiful and special about it and it really cemented that Ayu is my favorite singer and performer. Now, I'm just eagerly awaiting the new album coming later this year like the rest of y'all!

I don't know if my obsession with Ayu will ever reach the same heights it did during the mid-2000's. To be fair, I don't think I'll ever really truly be obsessed over anything like that ever again. I'm in my 30's now. I don't really have the time or emotional bandwidth to expend on anything like that anymore. That said, unless Ayu does something truly morally heinous, I don't see myself ever not being an Ayu fan. I will always love her and her music. My fandom for her will wax and wane, but she's been my favorite singer for almost 20 years. I don't see that changing anytime soon, if ever.
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Old 20th July 2022, 11:27 AM
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sxesven sxesven is offline
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@milkshake: my pleasure, I would love to see a forum revival!

@lizzylovesongaku: such a cool story, I loved reading it. I definitely see some parallels with my own stages of fandom although of course some things are also very different: I did not actively follow Ayu at all between pretty much the release of Colours and post-Trouble, so the whole Trouble debacle is something I've only heard speak of (in fact, I've not heard the thing - I currently have it queued to play later!).

The effect of life phases is very recognizable. I imagine many of us are now in our 30s (whenever I see the birthdays at the bottom of the page they pretty much range from low 30s to mid 45s) and things are just eternally different. It's fun though to sometimes recapture that surprising 'ooh!' of initial fandom. The other day I received a decent haul of Ayu CDs and the excitement was like I was 18 again, haha.
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