I'm a sucker for these compliation videos, and this one opens with Hato wa Modoranai <3

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing!

I love the fashion lol.

But really I’ve always been impressed with the tone and clarity of her voice in these older lives. I do wonder why Avex had her sing so nasally? Was it to give her a unique sound?

^I would guess it was because what was popular at the time were super high pitched voices.

It's amazing fabric- I think it's shown in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7LzlVDG2CM and she goes through other similar fabrics. I reckon Ayu is most likely to use the Japanese fabric company though. I think I could watch videos of the fabric floating in the air all day :luv2

Am I the only one who needs Ayu-trance 5? She could give us Ayu-mi-x 8 this year and I’ll STFU for another 5 years without an album. Well, maybe. But please bring the trance remixes back :weep

^ a remix album would be amazing!

Same! Ayu is the only singer that I listen to the songs remixes.

Same here. I listen to her remixes on a daily basis. SUPER EUROBEAT presents ayu-ro mix 2 is my favorite.

Defo! I've been listening to Ayu Trance 4 a lot lately!

Seriously though... For 23rd Monster and Haru yo, koi, is she singing through a potato? Dreamed a dream sounds fine, but something is off with those two (I still love them though).

Dream a dream also sounded like potato

The promo materials for ayu-mi-x used to legit scare the crap out of me. I almost forgot how eeries the pictures looked.

https://mega-mix.ocnk.net/phone/data...037001b3e9.jpg
You are telling me this isn't the video tape featured in The Ring?

http://img.youtube.com/vi/_HT3bJji2CU/0.jpg

Actually NOTHING FROM NOTHING had a pretty eerie cover as well:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...thingalbum.jpg

^^ I wish Ayu would do more horror-inspired concepts and visuals, I *love* the ourselves PV.

Thats the Vinylbox I saw last time in Toyko but did not get

Not sure if this is the right place but I had my first Ayu-related dream in years so I wanted to share :laugh

I had a dream that the full version of the 23rd Monster PV was released, and it was basically a long dance-shot in what appeared to be the old ruins of some kind of roman-style temple, looked amazing to be honest. I was just confused because the hat+lipstick shot was nowhere to be seen and Ayu was dancing a lot and I was thinking she was killing for a pregnant woman :laugh

Also she announced at the same time that each month there would be another single release, and the ones for next month were two short words I can't really remember, I think it might have been BLISS and Caress, don't ask. I was trying to rush back home to listen to the previews because apparently mobile phones with sound weren't a thing in my dream?

Anyways, that shows how excited I am that there is some activity on the Ayu front after years of her touring :laugh

Omg, I did some digging around and found this cover for one of the cds from the ayu-mi-x box set. NIGHTMARE FUEL material: (Seriously, what was their creative team thinking around that period???)

https://www.calvadoshof.com/artist/H.../aboxomake.jpg

I love that though! If I saw it I’d want to buy it for the cover alone.

Actually this is the case for the cards, not for a CD, ayu-mi-x Box are Vinyls^^

Speaking of which, are there any remixes you feel that have a creepy/darker sound to them? I always thought Vogue (Hal’s mix) and endless sorrow (Brent mini’s gothic mix) were some. I like them, though. Singles back then were packed with some interesting remixes.

First time watching this 2010 performance :love

I was at that a-nation, it was so much fun!

Pre-earthquake Japan :(

—
Unrelated, and maybe an unpopular opinion, but I love the NEXT LEVEL album lol. I forgot how obsessed I was when it was released. It was also the first tour I attended, and the first album to be released since arriving in Japan. So many good memories~ And I love how it opens. It reminds me of RAINBOW in that regard, which is another of my favorites.

^^ NEXT LEVEL is a very optimistic and breezy album. I know exactly what you mean when you say it’s similar to RAINBOW.

NEXT LEVEL is amazing. Maybe I overrate it because it was my first album but seriously everything about it is perfection, from the singles to the new tracks, and the videos, and the fact that first press bonus were still interesting. So bad I could purchase only one version lol

I also like nEXT LEVEL - it has a very different feeling to what surrounds it and stands put in her disco (not in a bad way).
I wouldn't say it is the most complete body of art I every listend to or that it is groundbreaking, just nice.

I still hate Days tho and I think Days and maybe GREEN (although I love it) do not really belong. But i had the same problem with glitter/fated and sunrise/sunset and their albums. They really felt like singles before there was an idea for an album.

I felt like they should've put the CMJK remix of GREEN on there instead. It'd fit SOOOOO MUCH better. (and that 8-bit remix of Days too if they insist on putting Days on NL lol)

Next Level was such a moment. It was so exciting to have Ayu return to electronica and she was one of the first artists in any country to follow the Lady Gaga bandwagon and start to make dance pop music. Makes a great followup to the dark Guilty. Totally agree about the remixes being on the album! I wish Spotify and Ayus Youtube would fix the CMJK mix of Green, it plays Sparkle instead!

Wow I honestly wasn’t expecting so many people to agree! In my head it wasn’t very well received upon release, I’m glad to see people enjoy it as much as me haha.

I love every bit of Next Level. Somehow this album feels most special to me. Just everything about it is really cool. Starting with the songs and there is a ballad ayu, rock, electro, edgy and finishing with the visuals of the package, it's so colourful and timeless to me. Not to mention Sparkle must be my favourite music video of hers ^^

The NEXT LEVEL era's so awesome! All the singles were really good (GREEN, Days, Rule and Sparkle are hits, so were the PVs) but the only thing I remembered everyone disliking is the amount of interludes. The album got 4 interludes, right? Oh, that feels ages ago! When Made in Japan came out, people were surprised just seeing 1 interlude and that's it.

I'm really happy with the identity performance she did recently. Promised Land? Not too well updated with her latest tours.

^Yep, CDL19-20!

I really love NEXT LEVEL, too! From the aesthetics to its sound, it's just such a great album and era, and I love the mix of electronic music with some rock-ish elements. Imo, the album works really well as a whole and is definitely one of my favourite records by Ayu. :love

Don't know if this was covered late last year but looks like ex-boyfriend Maro is back out performing again. I was going through Riki Fujimaki's (one of Ayu's acrobats - he was her partner in her Endless Sorrow performance 2016) Instagram and looks like Maro was part of a show with Riki and Ayu's other acrobats back in December 2020. Thought it was interesting and certainly makes a change from "eating grass." Maro also has a youtube channel with a vlog from said show.

Well, Maro had a long road, he was singer, farmer, porno actor, yoga teacher, tried a political career... what else? He was good as a dancer and I'm glad he back to this kind of work

From Ken Hirai’s thread
Ayu is that you?

Releasing albuns really doesn't make much sense anymore unless you want an album for artistic reasons.

That's an interesting point but I think I disagree!

The format might not make sense sales-wise but there's so much more to an album than just a collection of songs. Do you get the same sounds in mind if I say GUILTY and Colours?

Even from what I can see of other major pop singers, people seem to refer to their different albums as 'eras' a lot. That says a lot imo, that every album is still some kind of experimentation or variation around a theme.

If anything, this comment means compilations are now irrelevant (looking at you A BALLADS 2).

If I recall correctly, BLUE BIRD was suppose to be a triple A-side single but was changed. I even remember they released a statement. So it would've been BLUE BIRD, Beautiful Fighters, and ????? I wonder what the 3rd song would've been. Looking at the Secret album none of those tracks would have "fit" in the BLUE BIRD single in my opinion so I like to believe that 3rd song is now a rare unreleased track stuck in the vault :laugh Anyway, I'm just rambling over here lol

I wonder if Ayu has some songs from before that she never released and that they still exist somewhere in some file. Maybe a song that didn't make it to the album Duty, I am... or Secret. I think I read that the song petal (or some other song from the album LOVE again) was a song she had from before.

^ I'm sure there are a lot of such songs! I think all artists have this kind of vast unreleased catalogue and it's super interesting what could be found there ^^

I would say that Ayu has released a lot of songs from her back catalogue.

I truly believe that Will is one such song. I also believe that any of the more recent DAI compositions are from her back catalogue.

I sometimes wonder if many of the Secret songs are back catalogue tracks as it was originally a mini-album.

We need to hire a hacker. Seriously, they don’t know how much we’d appreciate an unreleased album of some sort. Even alternative versions of songs like those unfinished demos we got sometimes on CMs.

The only leak I’ve seen of demos is Ringo Shiina’s demo tapes. And she’s signed to a world label. Other than that I don’t know of any other Japanese big scale leaks.

A stalker broke into Avril lavignes home and posted on his IG photos of him in her studio with a pile of external hard drives stacked before he was arrested.

Random but I wish someone would leak her music and Ayu’s but I like your idea of a hacker :D:P

I think she said that about Gloria too, but I could be wrong!

Gloria, petal and Sweet scar are old demos she had in her vault, if I remember right.

Wake me up too

What is your source? I believe you of course and stuff like this about artists i always find fascinating :D

Wake me up is a demo bought from some bunch of producers who did some works for a lot of artists, but I don't know if she had it before or bought it at the time.

Sorry about double posting, but Ayu published something on TÁ.

She did indeed have auditions and added 4 female and 3 male dancers.
And they filmed/are filming the video.

It seems the VOJA tension choir ayu has been working with is disbanding at the end of the year. I really like them, their energy has always been infectious! I'm sure if the need arises ayu will find a new good choir.

I need to hear all the unreleased stuff too lol
It may be even better than what she’s actually released...

Didn't she say at some point that Party Queen was intended to be a double album? And Wake me up was probably going to be used for that. It makes sense since PA and LA are quite related theme wise.

I hope this new found inspiration also inspires her to have things like schedules and deadlines or at least a regular release pattern :(

I just remembered that i can access some press photos of Ayu on depositphotos :D It's just a couple of pages worth of images. But it's cool to be able to download them in high resolution.

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

^Oh my god that Hey! Hey! Hey! performance on the first chorus hits just right.
Thank you for this, quite a few perfromances I hadn't seen in there!

I just noticed that Subaru wasn’t featured in 23rd Monster and Music for Life concert. Is he still with thr troupe?

probably no. I don't remember messages about official graduation, but he wasn't around for some time already

Hi guys the 2001 TV LIVE Collection is finally complete ! You can enjoy it on YouTube (before it was deleted) and bilibili.



Or link to Bilibili :
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ph411z7TA

Enjoy !

So awesome! Thank you

I love reliving the fashion. When is no-wash dark blue denim coming back? Lol

anyways, it's 31 July, so it's been one year since the release of Dreamed a Dream.

still can't believe it's been a year. truly one of the very few good things to have come out of 2020 for me :cry

Didn't know where to put it as it's more Entertainment but also kind of ayu. Japan is getting their own The Masked Singer in September on Amazon prime and in the trailer the first person is singing Evolution :)

^I honestly thought Japan already had Masked Singer on TV because it just seems like something they'd absolutely love. Would be pretty epic if Ayu was one of the masked artists though. :D

I've had a bunch of articles in my feed promoting that they'll be singing Ayu songs! It's definitely a part of the promotion.

Ohh I can’t wait to watch!

Thanks for posting the trailer! Nice to hear someone singing Evolution!

Awesome! So if we have Amazon Prime Video already... will we be able to watch this even if we don't live in Japan? I really hope so!

I have to say, I still love Paper Doll and Limit off of Nothing from Nothing. I wonder if she ever catches herself humming these tunes to this day, haha. Especially since, from what I've heard, she wrote the lyrics to Limit.

Limit is for me just such a good listen.

I don't know how to explain this in a way that makes the most sense, but I always think that music plays in my ears and I always get a visualization based on it, which may or may not be due to me being a visual artist type of person or everyone has this experience (I honestly am not sure). But whatever is the case, when I listen to Nothing from Nothing, even just seeing the title, I see in my head someone singing in a dark room, you know? I always think she sounds a little weighed down by life in this music, which reading about her life, I could truly believe.

I guess what I take away is that she's always had an ability to express herself through music, she just needed the chance to do it.

^I really love those too. LIMIT is by far my favourite off of NFN! :heart

Nope. You could sign up for a free Amazon Japan trial though once the whole thing has aired and watch it.

Ayu will appear later this month on FNS Special called "Laugh and Music" or something. It's a 2-night special with a lot of guest artists and she will be on air in the first night, at August 28th. It's on her website. Guess she'll sing some of her summer bops only. Guesses?

SEASONS and You & Me will be performed at least. I think she should do 23rd Monster too but only because it'd be epic as h*ll but I doubt it's gonna happen as it's not a summer song.

do you guys remember Manuel Schwarz?

I really want to see scans of Super Manuel once again

I remember those photos shocked me a lot. I wonder how I'd feel about them now haha

^Saw few LQ scans years ago, I don't think there's like HQ out there, he had nice a butt tho :laugh

btw my sister started making amigurumis (those knitted plushies) and she made me an Ayu one (PoM 2011) and she looks so adorable! :luv2

https://i.imgur.com/VgNxkYS.jpg

Your sister is so talented!!!
How cute!

I’d love to see more if she makes any!

^^ wow it's so cute! :love:luv2

Hey guys, I wanted to share with you this new video I made with live TV from 2002. Hope you'll like it.



Link to Bilibili :https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Xf4y1P7Sz

Enjoy !

^ wow thank you so much! it doesn't open here though but I searched this video on YouTube and here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxcqdsVdDn8

there are some lives I've never seen!! feels so great to discover them now :heart

That is so cute!! She did an amazing job!

I love it :luv2

Has ayu ever addressed why she is touring in smaller venues nowadays? Is it because she wants to or budget cuts / she's not selling full venues anymore?

^ Arenas are generally harder to tour in during the past few years because they were closed off in preparation for the Olympics. And with MUSIC for LIFE, it was a TA exclusive concert, same with the Summer Party.

Well, the new tour will be hold in BIG venues at least in Japan so, I don’t know. Maybe in the past she wanted to do as much performances as she could and the best option for that were halls. But with lesser shows, I think she can fill arenas quite easily.

She's using half of the capacity of the arenas for her arena tours for some years already.
Now with the Covid restrictions she most probably can use only half or even less as well, so really not much of a difference.

I heard positive feedback from people attended small venues. Ayu is much closer to audience

She’s very skilled! I was just watching POM last night and I haven’t watched any of her concerts in full but that one is my favorite

Does anyone know if something happened before the duet on Ayuready? with w-inds.?

The juxtaposition between how distant and bored they look during the song, but having tons of fun during the talk segment always struck me as off.

It’s like none of them wanted to sing the song lol.

Has Ayu ever released a sweatshirt without a hood as part of her tour goods?

This Xmas showcase is sooo great! She looks perfect :luv2 and her voice sounds really good! :love I totally love it. such a pity there were no fans.

is it me or Madonna's Love Profusion music video has the same fairies as in ayu's forgiveness PV? I've just rewatched Madonna's PV and thought like: oh ayu's forgiveness PV must have been inspired by Madonna's PV as it also contains the same fairies and both PVs were released in 2003. but then I checked Wikipedia and learnt that Madonna's PV was released later! but how did this coincidence happen? were animated fairies a trend back in 2003 or what? or Madonna's PV was really inspired by ayu's forgiveness?

wah why no one writes here except me :confused

I've just found this video and I've never seen it before!! OMG ayu & Namie two-shot video!

^ Rare occasion to see them together. :)

I am looking forward to recreating last Christmas Eve by watching the Xmas Showcase again this year! A shame the covers aren't included though.

Few weeks ago I managed to feature Ayu on a latin radio, they've been playing her a lot, specially on fridays on this japanese inspired program but they also started playing ayu in regular programs lol so anyways, we've been asking for her music so much that she's currently #15 on the radio's TOP20 and we can vote for her on this link so she can enter the TOP10 :D I think it would be really cool to make it happen so if anyone wants to help you just need to go to this post, give it a like and leave a comment (probably should be in spanish but maybe english should work too lol)

"I'm (your name) from (country/city) and I vote for Ayumi Hamasaki in Lobi y Radio's #Top20!"

(in case you want to write in spanish it would be something like this)

"Soy (your name) de (country/city) y voto por Ayumi Hamasaki en el #Top20 de Lobi y Radio!"

here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/LOBIANDRADI...71949711607124

If you have the time please vote for her :love

Today is Secret's 15th anniversary! It's still one of my favourite albums ever and if that wasn't a true passion project, then I don't know what is. :heart

When is she releasing a new album... :yfrown

Secret is the album of hers I most associate with Christmas/Winter time.

Anything new from this video posted 3 days ago?
I don't think there'll be any new studio album soon, I just understood (with my basic japanese) that he doesn't know and that they talked about something ?
If someone can properly translate... (DO NOT expect anything new from this please)

^ I tried to translate, and i think he basically said he'd have to talk to ayu heself about it. And he said that it's not like either of them are avoiding this topic, but he can't really talk about it lol (not entirely sure about the last part though, I also had to rely on google translate, so... i'll just wait for someone with better japanese skills to translate it more accurately!)