Almost 500K views on youtube, I'm so proud of her. By the way, the song is very sweet & touching in the good way and the lyrics are just perfect for his son. It reminds me, meaning of love & LOVE again era. As usual Yuta Nakano is very predictable but the melody is beautiful.

Also ayu's voice is pretty good except in the end of the song with the "ah" But overall I really enjoyed it. I feel her emotion during the song & I'm really happy.

Now let's go for the next album girl !!!!

I think it isn't so much that Yuta is predictable but the sound he makes for Ayu is the one she wants, that is why she goes back to him. He is very capable and versatile if he isn't in that mid-tempo mode Ayu seems to ask him for in recent arrangements.

I know Yuta Nakano is very versatile, I love a lot of songs he arranged. It's just typical ayu's ballad with the same arrangements like meaning of love, walk, anything for U etc..... It seems very generic to me like a lot of songs this days... I know Ayumi probably wants this kind of arrangements & it's ok for this song but verryyyyyyy safe. By the way I love it anyway :p

https://twitter.com/rice20000/status...54450183237638

Ayu's audio director "Kome" commented on the firsts. He said thanks for the first place and that there's lots of 'firsts' attached to this and that he is glad many people listened to this song that has 'Ayu's unchanging character'.

Daily positions are only an indicator, important are the daily numbers published by e.g. Oricon or Billboard, covering all big download sites.

Saying that, Ayu is at #1 on the first day with 5k sold digitally:
https://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/dis/d/2020-07-05/

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...924/QZJ548.png

Congrats to her!

You guys talking about the fact she dropped this just after the drama finished got me thinking about if it aired a year or two ago or if she had held on to The Way I Am and dropped that instead?

I feel like the impact on the forum would have been wild lmao

Either way I'm so happy she's charting so well and is overall getting a positive reception to Ohia's release :)

Daily no.1 is still nothing to scoff at. I don't think anything really got to that position with TROUBLE or M(A)DE IN JAPAN, but at the same time it's just been a while since new music that being no.1 again after that long of a break it's even more amazing.

I love The way I am, the lyrics and melody are not quite matched by the arrangement though.

At this point in her career, she just needs to lean hard into the sound that has defined her music. Some might say this sounds dated, but I think it perfectly encapsulates the Ayu sound, with a chorus that I can actually recall for the first time since, what, 2013/2014? This is the right way forward for Ayu. I hope she sustains this direction. The last seven years really felt like unremarkable filler.

Forcing Ayu to experiment or break new ground will just turn her into a caricature like what Madonna has become since Confessions on a Dancefloor. Ayu’s musical identity has already been fully formed and shaped. She just needs to thoughtfully re-explore the musical geography she has carved out in the past.

^Just a matter of taste tho.

Sad thing is I’m in the mood for drama Ayu in the vein of party queen, not this cheesy (but sweet) ballads. I think she’ll write about completely different things from now on lol

I really like that she uses the Japanese title for her song.

It's really nice to see her at #1 again, even if it's just for a day. I wonder where she will rank on the weekly chart, any predictions? Usually new singles come out on a Friday, don't they? In that case, Ayu is missing two days worth of sales.

But in the end, I am happy either way. The most important thing is the fact that we have a new song. :heart

Given how downloads seem to be rather low overall, I would think top 5 at the least. MAYBE top 3?

Also I finally saw what mimika was talking about with Max's tweets earlier in the year! He basically held a camp for songwriters/producers to make stuff for Ayu, lol.

http://ahsforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=124947

Pretty much covered it in this thread. It bodes well for more Ayu music down the road. It seems Asia is a big target from now on along with general global appeal?

That would be really nice! :)

Ayu saw that she's #1 and posted screen of recochoku ranking at her instastory with "arigato gozaimasu"

Nice! She may have seen it from Kome since he also posted it.

Good single. Deserved #1

It isn’t, however the number of streams on Spotify is ~4k. I guess the majority of people are using Youtube 😅

Isn't Japan prefer awa over Spotify?

I'm not really sure what Japan is using but Spotify is usually pretty low for Ayu as well as AWA overall. It's sort of everywhere so a bunch of people are doing it via Apple Music and then the other 10 services that have the song.

They just really split up how people can listen to it. It's on AWA, Apple Music, iTunes Store, LINE Music, Spotify, Recochoku, Utapass, DwangoJP, mora, Amazon Music, and mu-mo.

I think given the positions on charts and trending, a lot of people listened to or purchased it on Apple Music/iTunes or Recochoku if they could and a lot of people had their first listens on YouTube. There are also two versions of the song on YouTube, the one on Ayu's channel as official audio and one just as a single release.


^559k+ views


^17k+ views

Also 4k seems a bit low. I checked my Spotify and it was at 17k streams.

https://i.imgur.com/s9fibP6.png

Right now the most popular services are according to the ICT inquiry we get every year:
01. Prime Music (amazon)
02. Apple Music
03. LINE Music
04. Spotify

AWA is only at 7.
Spotify got more.popular in the last two years.

https://mag.app-liv.jp/archive/35240/