Yume no Uta



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyRwQrXtxSs

Futari de…



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0xmNIIwUOo

Wow , still a masterpiece of a single after so many years

Yume no Uta / Futari de... is 1 of the few Kuu singles I personally have it in physical hard copy as it was and is still so good

Yume no Uta is still so....majestic. It's a shame Kumi is a bit funny with it after the composition issue came to light.

Majestic is the word!
This song is so amazing live.

I’m a bit annoyed too about how she acts with this song. 3 years ago in a Award TV show, they invited former winners to perform old winning songs and she performed Ai no Uta while she had won with Yume no Uta...
I was pleased to see she performed it at reLive last year.

^ Yume no Uta may have won originally but I don’t exactly think performing a song that was later found out to have basically been plagiarized would have been a good look for her so...??? Why are you mad lol

i prefer Futari de... tbqh; same composition tho

Oh no, what song did Yume no Uta plagarize?

Well was it really That big of a deal? I know Alex stopped working with the composer but it didn’t stopped the single being her 2nd biggest best seller and Yume no Uta being a popular song even nowadays despite being almost erased from her discography since a decade.

Once again, I feel kind of frustrated by the over exposure of Ai no Uta while she had many successful ballads with a similar popularity like you, Yume no Uta, Moon Crying or even Suki de.
Glad she has a hit song but sadly this is my least fav ballad…


Her singing in Futari de… bugs me. Don’t really like the song because of this.

It’s not like the news broke before the single was released, it was released and THEN the plagiarism came to light. She’s supposed to keep promoting a plagiarized song on music shows and awards shows just because it sold well??? She’d get criticized left right and center for that.

Yume no uta is one of my favorite Kuu ballads. It’s a shame it had that issue :(

I love Stay with me too, and would love if she sang it more. Ai no uta has been very played out, I never really liked it even during its release lol. I understand the appeal, though. It kind of checks all the boxes for a hit ballad for the Japanese audience

:yes:yes yes!!

Calm down :o

I don’t think the plagiarism was that big issue and it’s not even that obvious (if so, it wouldn’t be discovered years after the release).
Why would she be criticized ? it’s not like she was the composer of the song and it was pushed everywhere like crazy during it’s release (the top of the peak of her career). People I know from Japan who are not Kumi’s fans all know Yume no Uta. It was a hit among her casual listeners so she should definitely uses the song a little more in my opinion!

Anyway Yume no Uta is definitely one of my fav songs from her and definitely her best ballad performed live.

Yeah it’s true! Suki de is also such kind of song.
If I remember well, at the time of the release Avex marketed Suki de as a Ai no Uta sister because they were frustrated to lost the awards shows with Ai no Uta...

I remember Yume no Uta plagarize case was a big thing, the refrain was almost identic to another song previously released. Avex bought the copyright from the composer/singer to shut up everything. obviously no one blamed Kumi.

Refrain:
(2005/07/27 Release)




Pre-chorus
From the album『Believe Yourself』(1998/08/26 Release)

^was it tho? i remember fans online talking about it, but I never heard of an of those artist claiming the song rights. Maybe avex even paid them out for further use. She is still singing both songs, even in concerts (which get released on DVD) - I highly doubt that would still be the case if this was not solved.

It was a big deal. I can see why she would only perform the song in concerts because to do so anywhere else would so not be a good look for her. My memory of the time is a little fuzzy but I definitely don’t remember anyone blaming her (how could she or avex have known?) but to continue promoting it on shows and stuff after the news broke would have been a lose-lose situation for her.

This whole plagiarism was right at the time the song was out, and if it was a bigger deal she wouldn't win the Grand Prix she won for it. Avex didn't stop working with Hiroo Yamaguchi at all, he does the bass for some of Kumi's songs (walk ~to the future~, Alone, Stand By You) and he also worked with BoA and Ai Otsuka.

Also, she promoted Yume no Uta everywhere, during the release she performed on Music Station, CDTV, Music Fighter, Heyheyhey, and was the song she used for all the award shows including the one she won, and even sang the song on a-nation 07 and J-WAVE 07, so promoting was not a problem at all, and I don't think people even remember this issue at all.

She might not like the song that much since she often performs Futari de instead of Yume no Uta (Kingdom, UNIVERSE and WOML Tour), maybe because of the lyrics which Futari de has a much more positive meaning.

I do understand people wanting her to give more attention to other ballads, but to the general public Ai no Uta is her biggest one, the same applies to Namie's CAN YOU CELEBRATE, Ayu's SEASONS and so on, so when she's invited to a show which is about their "biggest songs", don't expect her to perform something else just because it sold more physically. Ai no Uta outsold digitally back then and it is more remembered, and that's all.

^yeah it really wasn't that big of a deal. As I said, if the song would have problems it would also have been cut from concerts since these releases also included rights (like when ou perform covers).
Everything else was pointed out by kaled. promotion went on as usual. It really has nothing to do with it being plagarized (and there was never an official statement, maybe both parts were sold here and there and ended up in two songs - or the composer even sold those parts separately with keeping the rights.)

I didn’t know. This means the plagiat topic was not a real issue.
I guess you are right, Yume no Uta is probably not one of the personal fav song from Kumi.
Didn’t she broke up with her long time boyfriend around 2006? The lyrics maybe reminds her of this past relationship.


Who else is surprised by the relative high success of Koishikute and Ai wo Tomenaide in her YouTube Chanel ?
Koishikute is especially impressive as the song didn’t really succeed in the download charts if I remember well.

Koishikute's case is probably the Youtube algorithm working and making the song being the next recommended video to play. I say this because the other stats are quite low for the number of views:

Koishikute has 502k views, but only 2.500 likes and 90 comments
Cutie Honey has 530k views but has 5.000 likes and 232 comments.
DDD has 305k views but 3.200 likes and 166 comments.

So the ratio is little off for an "organic" view counts.

Ai wo Tomenaide was her last somewhat hit ballad and the movie for the tie-in did pretty well, so the views are quite alright.

Yume no Uta and Futari de are two songs I absolutely don't care about.

Speaking about youtube Ai no Uta is now her most viewed original MV. Looks like the public slowly discovers it has been fully uploaded there. :rolleyes
And it's amazing to see that Love Me Back is still going strong! If it's going on like that it's going to be among the first songs hitting a million views.
It also has over 6k likes!
More than Ai no Uta e.g. and from what I fastly gathered only surpassed by Megumi no Hito (7k) and you (also more than 6k).

The Paradox Live collabo actually is a nice marketing move, I think.
Anime/vocaloid groups are pretty popular right now and Kenshi Yonezu e.g. started with that (still has a hand in it).

And yeah, Ai wo tomenaide was her last hit single so to speak, being 2 weeks at #1 digitally and getting digitally certified right after the release of the single (overall Platinum).
After that she also lost sale power digitally.
It was also right after she announced her relationship, her pregnancy and so on at the time of the Love Me Back single release.
Guess you could argue about if that changed the interest of the public.