Whoever her team is or Avex...just embarrassing. Avex are so lucky they have EXILE because they've driven all their acts into the ground and haven't launched a successful new act/group in years.

Auto tune is bad. Can't feel Ayu's emotion when they cap it with that awful correction software.

Also, I really dislike GREEN's arrangement - I keep thinking RED LINE is coming in every time the instruments start up.

EXILE and their related groups are not Avex's, their company is LDH (whose president is EXILE's leader Hiro), they only release through Rhythm Zone, but their management don't have anything to do with Avex at all... which explains why their groups have a much better management.

Ayu, go to Dimension Point with the other queen !

ikr get out of avex ayu lol But I guess she can't since the only reason her career is a thing is mr. max matsuura being a pain in her ass when she was a teen *sigh* really wish she would avex effs everything up

It's time for her to take a hiatus or she simply just can't sing properly anymore...

She can, the FNS SEASONS TV performance was almost flawless.
I think she really needs a good rest.
The AT2015 was also great and not autotuned fixed and that was almost 4 hours.
In the CDL it's just very clear her vocal chords are really strained and she could do nothing with it. Now at least she has no show in the horizon at least until April so she has 4 months of rest to rest her voice which is a lot of time.

She didn't rest for a long time properly since the beginning of AT15.

I just can't with you guys blaming Avex for any bad decision. We're talking about Ayumi Hamasaki, not a brand new artist who has no voice inside the company. She is the executive producer of pretty much everything that she releases. This is not just about a bad company, or bad management, Ayu probably don't care if her voice has to be edited the hell out on the DVD.

I agree with you, but I wouldn't go that far (to that bold sentence), she just really couldn't do anything with it. She needs rest obviously and she didn't want to cancel the yearly CDL. She tried to do her best, that one can see.

I'm not saying that she's lazy or anything, knowing she could have a voice coach just for a show or whatever, I'm talking specifically about the DVD footage.
She knew how her voice was going to sound and did her best. The fact that they are going to edit her voice for a video release is not a new thing, and it's done as poorly as it was done before, and as I said, she probably don't care about it.

i don't know if ayu is really "the head" behind her decisions. Since she isn't an icon anymore and setting new trends, i don't think she can publish what she wants this is what i think ..

I just hope that THAT edited version doesn't end up in the DVD. Probably they just needed to make a quick edition for the sake of an early youtube preview. No matter how much I adored this CDL, last year's was better imo.

She just DID hire a voice coach around the time of Colours, didn't she? It's simply overuse. She knows how to use her voice, and we know that she sounds great when she is rested and prepared. It has been a year FULL of performing, and I'm sure it is exhausting. Cut her a bit of slack.

^ I agree, specially considering she had pneumonia a few weeks ago that I'm still not convinced she made a full recovery before going back to performing (after all it's pneumonia, not a simple cold)... She needs some nice rest.

I think it's the opposite. When she was the top selling artist Avex had her on a leash the whole time, making sure she was still popular and that people knew her every move. It was when she took control of her career and started doing things her way that her popularity started to decline... and she seems much happier about it now than back then when Avex was controlling everything she did.
People blame Avex for things they don't like because it's easier than blaming Ayu, but imo most decisions about her career now a days are her own, not Avex's, or at least she's the one who approves what's shown to her.
That's not to say that eventually Avex might press her with something, a well known example being the a-nation '11...

I know I sound like a broken record, so I'll repeat for the last time.
She shouted all 3 dates instead of singing, but on 29th and 30th her voice wasn't hoarse yet. She sounded exactly like in 2011-2014 with all that shouting, very different from more calm vocals from CDL 2014-2015 and arena tour 2015.
So I'm not sure she knows how to use her voice properly. Maybe it's her deafness that makes her shout that hard, but this CDL vocals were a big step back.

what happened then?

^ wasn't that the Naoya episode?

She wanted to perform with Naoya and JUNO. JUNO, of course, is the twin brother of JYJ's Junsu, who would not be performing at a-nation that year (because TVXQ was going to, and it was in the middle of the whole lawsuit problem between them, so if one was performing, the other couldn't), so Avex pretty much told Ayu JUNO couldn't perform and that she was going to perform the song with someone else instead. Ayu being who she is obviously got mad at the treatment they were giving JUNO and herself. She went against Avex's decision, decided to not perform the song at all since JUNO couldn't perform (instead of performing with someone else, I assume it was Naoya, but I don't think it was ever revealed who Avex told her to perform with, she just said they told her to perform with someone else) and completely refused to be the last performer and end the concert like she always did. That got Avex's staff complaining she was being childish, making they have to adjust the lineup in a rush because she refused to follow what was already planned (though they were forcing her to change her setlist out of the blue right before that, so I find it hypocrisy on their part to complain about her doing to same)... I'm honestly proud of her for defending JUNO at that time, what Avex did to him for something he had no relation to (it was his brother issue, not his) was absurd.

Wow, thanks for the info. I didn't know this whole story as I wasn't a fan in 2011. This proves once again that ayu is a great person!

@pimenta At the same time I don't think they were trying to make her change the setlist, since her song with JUNO as also recorded with Naoya, and what she did was pretty much how she acted during 2000s when she was really against a lot of things that Avex was making her do.
I understand the problem with JUNO probably was bigger than Avex could handle in such a short time (he performing at the same stage than his brother on the same day), so Avex isn't that one to blame, more like the internal problem with TVXQ lawsuit, but I totally think Ayu did the right thing at that time, keeping everything how she wanted and showing who was in charge.