Ayu : Product vs Artist and other things

[orbitalaspect]

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

^About her recent lyrics from Colours and A One being as deep.

Most of the depth from her lyrics came from the fact she was singing mostly about her experiences and feelings. They were deep because she was giving her own personal insight on stuff everyone goes through, and this was where the indentification came from.

But where are these lyrics today? We've had a few of them in songs like Virgin Road and RETURN ROAD, but I'm hard-pressed to agree that any single track off LOVE again or Colours was given the same focus as really any song on MY STORY or (miss)understood. And I think we can all agree that really everything apart from GUILTY, I am..., and A Song for XX pales in comparison when looking for Ayu in Ayu's music.

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

She got a lot of shit during Party Queen/Love Again for exposing herself way too much, not being "professional", exploiting her personal life for sales. And this is pretty much what she did since day 1 of her career. From asfxx to Love Again her whole career was constructed around putting her personal conflicts on the spotlight.

There's a difference. Ayumi circa 1998 was relatively unknown, and Ayumi circa 2018 pretty much puts everything out there. I heard more criticism about the extremely odd production and huge, huge variation in genres of songs than I did anything about her divorce from Manny. FIVE was largely informed by her divorce well ahead of PQ and it was her first album in years to top Oricon for more than one week. I think PQ and La came across as low-effort releases.

And a lot of people were actually disappointed with LOVE again because they really botched the 5-months-of-releases-for-the-15th-anniversary. LOVE was pushed as a new mini-album, but when the tracklist was released, it was just a 2A with 1 B-side and 6 extra tracks, of which were 1 instrumental and two remixes for a song that had already been squeezed to promote A SUMMER BEST 4 months earlier and the original track wasn't even on the single as a b-side. Add to that that Ayu had just released FIVE the year before with FIVE PVs, but LOVE was announced with only two PVs... I just don't see how that was going to be received as a good idea. again followed the same pattern less than a month later, having four new songs, four instrumentals, and four remixes, two of which were for songs on LOVE. And then comes along A Classical, which literally which was a great release if 2 of the 8 tracks hadn't just been released on the "mini-albums" LOVE and again two months earlier.

And then comes LOVE again. An album that, by then, a lot of us were wondering if it was an album or an "album"--if it would be 7 new songs and four new interludes? ...Or 2 new versions of "untitled", 8 remixes (4 of them extended versions of tracks from NOTHING FROM NOTHING), the instrumental for "meaning of LOVE", and a hyped up hidden track that we'd later discover was just the first 15 seconds of "INSPIRE x ARMAND VAN HELDEN" looping for four and a half minutes while Ayumi sings "la-la-la-la!"

It just blew our enjoyment as fans to be hyped up for five months of one over-promise, under-deliver after another--things that weren't anywhere near the impression we were given by Ayu and avex. They said LOVE would be a mini-album, and it was just an overblown single. And then they said again would be a mini-album, and it too was just an overblown single. And then they said Ayu would do her first original classical remix album, and it was the same damn cover from LOVE and half of the tracks had already been released in orchestral versions, two of them within the last two months.

So when LOVE again came around with its total of five new songs out of 15 total tracks, and every single song was Ayumi going back and forth between actual singing and baby-talk-singing... we checked out. This is someone we all admire enough to come back to the AHS forum just to talk to people about things most of us know because we've been huge fans of Ayu. But for crying out loud, sing about something else for a song or two, please... I don't care if the next PV is of Ayu wearing a $2 million dollar Charmin toilet paper dress that dissolves in the rain just to show how Charmin breaks up upon flushing to prevent sewage blocks and protect your pipes. Just find anything to talk about. Does she love Triscuit? Has she ever been emotional over the increase in the cost of postage? Find something other than the same topic for every song on yet another major release... you know what I mean? It was bad enough at times with Love songs, felt recoverable with FIVE, then really dragged with PQ and massively dragged with LOVE again. All of those releases revolved largely around the same relationship. Someone should have tapped her on the shoulder when THANK U was sent for mixing.

I totally get that your position is "Ayu didn't follow trends and that's what makes her an artist." And I just want to clarify that I think Ayu did follow a trend: LOVE. LOVE... LOVE LOVE LOVE. CHERISH LOVE. ALL THE LOVE. PEACE AND LOVE. LOVE THIS. LOVE THAT. LOVE YOURSELF. LOVE YOUR ALTERS. It was the same one lots of fans felt was said and done and didn't need to be the main focus for at least a little bit. Four years of one song after another that is so saturated with love love love... they don't make shamwows for that. And this may have been a topic for Ayu throughout her career, but she really narrowed the variety of ways she sung about it after she met Manny in 2010. Sometimes, it seems that pre-Manny Ayu and post-Manny Ayu are two entirely different women at times.

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

Colours was a change in direction, as most of the album is pretty impersonal. A One is filled with generic love songs that don't really talk about her personal life either, and people hated them again

So, people want her to get deep, but don't want her to get personal. Want her to be artistic, but don't want her to be too bold or take creative risks. Want her to take her time to make music, but don't want her to not release something for longer than 1 year. Want her to focus her tours on the music, but want it to be grand and extravagant. Want her to do something fresh, but want her to capture her classic sound from the early 00's. And they want her to be mature, but want her to have teen angst on her lyrics.

I want her to stop doing the routine. You think she's more of an artist today, please tell me why there is ALWAYS another tour that ALWAYS looks like the last tour and ALWAYS has the same visuals and stage theatrics and over-dramatized ballad performances of the same ballads performed on every tour. But the music isn't consistent. And it's been years since Ayu committed to at least releasing a new single every six months to a year. And I can't remember the last time Ayu did something that actually surprised us as fans, like she did going to London for RnRC or when she did the PV for Sparkle or when she decided to spend a million dollars on the PV for GREEN or release the full version of Mirrorcle World as a single. There's nothing to be excited by right now or within the last handful of years. It's pretty darn predictable. Kinda like business...?