Looks like it's part 2 of a series of their covers. They really went for a different sound, lol!

I didn’t like it at first but it grew on me lol

okay THIS made me feel extremely ancient. can't believe it's been half a decade since sixxxxxx! :O

We're at the point where some of Ayu's releases are older than some of her new fans, lol.

https://charts.youtube.com/charts/TopArtists/jp

For anyone who wants to track Ayu's official YT views + distribution globally for weekly periods. Some interesting revelations from it too. Taiwan is basically no.2 then USA for Ayu in weekly view terms!

^That´s really interesting! Thanks for sharing I had no idea you could check that info on YouTube :yes

Hey, can someone help me? I'm not sure if it's ok to post this on this thread but I didn't feel like it deserves its own thread lol I'm translating
to spanish this Hong Kong interview and I'm at the part where she says her name in chinese (around 04:35) and thanks to google translator I think she says "Bīnqí bù" (PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG) it's mandarin but I can't understand the cantonese one (how to write it basically) if someone knows how to write both names please let me know :cry

Her Mandarin name is "Bīn Qí Bù". Ayu typically uses the simplified writing (滨崎步).
The traditional one is 濱崎步 - it can be seen when the interviewer says her name.

The Catonese one should be written as "Ban Kei Bou", iirc.

I think they use the same signs but are pronounced differently, depending on what you speak. They use 濱崎步 for both in the interview.

^Thank you so much!!!! :luv2

I was looking at some Ayu info and saw that Junko Hirotani (a former backup vocal on many Ayu releases) had passed away in January 2020 after fighting breast cancer. She was last seen on Why.... as a backup vocalist. RIP Junko!

^ this is very unfortunate :( RIP Junko, thank you for contributing so much ♥

Thanks for the tip-off, that's sad to hear. :cry

How old was she at the time of her death?

She was 63 at the time. I'll always remember seeing her contributions in booklets and so on.

I've seen a-nation 2011 isn't gonna be uploaded on Ayu's YouTube channel. They've "mysteriously" skipped that year and I remember there was some kind of controversy with her performance. Do you guys remember what that was exactly? I've tried a quick google search but I haven't found anything. I remember that Urata Naoya was present during most of the songs and that she also performed a cover of WOW WAR TONIGHT

There was also a scandal around the same time involving Music Station, and Ayu was sort of banned from the show for some time, right?

I feel like I'm getting older and I have memory lapses xD

iirc many people were pissed off that Urata was kept on stage for so long and people even attacked them on twitter, ayu even got off from her twitter at the time. There was literally nothing wrong but people didnt like her giving him the spotlight.

Wasn't that the year Ayu didn't close the a-nation for some controverse at the time (I think it was Avex banning Juno for performing because the whole Tohoshinki issue), so she pretty much did anything she could to piss everyone she could off?

^What happened with Juno? I can't remember :think

To cut a very long story short, Juno is the brother of Junsu who was in TVXQ. Junsu, Jaejoong and trash Yuchun decided to take legal action against SM (TVXQ's agency, management and label in SK) due to overwork, profit, etc. The other two guys in the group Changmin and Yunho sided with SM. Both parties (Changmin/Yunho and Junsu/Jaejoong/trash Yuchun) were happy with Avex and Avex was happy to support both.

SM got pissed off with Avex and Max — and told Avex if they didn't denounce with and drop Junsu/Jaejoong/trash Yuchun, it would strain their business relationship with SM as a whole and access to TVXQ as just Changmin and Yunho. So Avex, washed their hands off the three other boys and subsequently had to do the same with Juno as a relative of Junsu. I believe this is also why they used a Blossom live performance instead of the PV with Jaejoong for the clip of summer songs at the beginning of the Natsu web concert last month lol

random but Ayu and Timmy are 66 days apart in age.

She also skipped a-nation '06 and I don't really remember much being wrong with that.

Technically at this point we've not had 2002, 2006, and 2011 in the compilations so far. They're also not really showing the a-nations in their entirety so who knows really why they're leaving holes in the a-nations represented.

People were annoyed that nearly every song featured Urata. (This could be exaggerated—in fact I don’t remember how long he was on stage... but it felt like an eternity.)

I think (possibly in a lot of places too, but particularly...) in Japan, people like to get what they pay for. So when there’s some unannounced guest on stage for a bunch of time, a lot of people were annoyed.

I being one of them (I’m not the biggest fan of Urata to begin with). But I would never have attacked her about it. I certainly complained on here tho lol.

Looking back at that time, he really was in nearly every song. I wonder if that and the JUNO stuff is why we don't see much attention paid to that a-nation even in recaps. a-nation '06 at least had its ASFXX posted.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x28b11t

Was watching this subbed talk from HEY!HEY!HEY with Bobby Ologun and Ayu during fairyland. It's a nice talk segment like I remember but they really laughed at Bobby too much. "Amaguri Kayumi" though is iconic.