Originally Posted by ChrisKay

:sigh:
I always ignored this kind of comment
Kuu is exist to give out her music to her fans & that is just her purpose as a celebrity & an idol. I don't give a damn about anything about her. I love her & her music, that is enough for me to be a supporters.


& I don't need any kind of reporters to influence me any kind of bad things about my favorite girl. & I don't care about it. It's not her who enjoys the music, the visual of Kuu.
It's me. & I decided to be a true-fan-who-likes-kuu-for-her-music-no-matter-what.

Originally Posted by asongforXX

It was harsh to say that she's oversexed.

But I have to agree that the first 3 singles were great and that the rest was mediocre (expect "WIND" for me, and maybe "Someday").

Originally Posted by ayu_fan929

Meh. Article is based on a westerners POV and probably for Western audiences. What matters is Japanese POV. However, I do agree the middle singles were kind of boring. The beginning and the end were good. I would've given the album a B.

Originally Posted by Akurei

I also Read that persons comments about Namie Amuro. And I will Honestly say that their an a - -

Originally Posted by that Francis guy who wrote the column before the Teresa woman

In this series, clicks’n’cuts dilettante Francis Henville describes his descent into the netherworld of Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean commercial pop. Track by track, he navigates deeper into the genre, searching for ever-more-toothsome morsels with which to satiate his jaded appetite…


Ayumi Hamasaki
Moments (Acoustic Piano Version)


Is Ayumi Hamasaki even real? Plug her name into Google’s image search and her face will pop up. Surely human beings like her couldn’t have existed before the industrial revolution. In the cuteness category, she makes Bjork look like Meatloaf. I prefer to think of her as a calcification of caste, breeding and modern elitism, secreted by years of consumption and eventually congealed into the perfect delicacy.

Of course, beauty wouldn’t be beauty without an expiry date. But for now, Ayumi is one of the strongest marketing tools Japan has, and she is used to sell every species of clothing, cell phone, makeup, television program and food that can’t be sold without the blessing of flawless twenty-something estrogen. When I went to Taiwan in 2000, her first album had just come out, and I remember seeing enormous images of her in a gattopardo catsuit—pouting, flipping a limp wrist—plastered to the exteriors of multistory music retailers. (I’m sure that image fueled the disgusting imaginations of the furries that Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka always aims his diatribes at.)

I hated Ayumi’s music. Most of her biggest hits were moronic, glassy happy-hardcore songs that battered the tiny speaker-systems of street vendors and bulk candy stores. And since then she has recorded albums that have milked the enormous teats of the lowest common denominator, jumping from lifeless techno to impotent rock to insincere ballads. Despite Ayumi’s figure, her music seems inherently fattening, and full of bad cholesterol.

This year, her biggest single has been “Moments,” which I found impossible to keep down until I heard this version. Her vocals are accompanied by a single piano, playing a simple but carefully inflected arrangement. It’s a track that lets you put her voice under a microscope.

And a new world is revealed. Ayumi sings lead and backup on this track, but she’s most effective when replicating herself in unison. Rather than rerecording the song with a rubato pianist, it seems that her producers have simply replaced the original pathetic rocking backing tracks with a piano. This piano couldn’t possibly be what Ayumi heard as she laid down her parts.

Her voice is full of breathless anticipation: perhaps she is imagining the future heights of media penetration and profit that her career will reach. Although her phrasing is carefully contrived, her voice has none of the whininess of Christina Aguilera’s, and when you place her next to American Idols, they seem like soulless husks. What’s more, the piano arrangement allows the unquestionable professionalism of Ayumi’s songwriters to shine through.

Not understanding the words, I’ve come to conceive of this as a paean to marketing. Play this track on headphones and look up at the bald blue sky, and you’ll hear her negotiating the price of the clouds and the distant birds. It’s impossible to think of Ayumi addressing this song to any lover but capitalism.

Poor thing. I wonder if she can lust after anyone as much as they can lust after her? It’s not enough for her to be stunningly proud and weak. No matter how many mirrors she looks into, she’ll never be attracted to her own exquisite lines. She couldn’t possibly love herself enough. I believe she knows this, and as evidence I submit the desperately polished perfection of her performance on this track.

Originally Posted by truehappiness

The guy who wrote one Ayu review was like.. high or something cause he's like badmouthing her.. and not...

Originally Posted by Josh Love

By now everyone knows the cultural stereotype—the Japanese are hopelessly, adorably behind the curve when it comes to Western music styles. Need I remind you how Full House’s Jesse Katsopolis and his band Jesse and the Rippers scored a number one hit in the land of the rising sun with the hairspray-damaged power ballad “Forever”—in 1992?

But seriously, how Japan’s sluggish echo chamber ever became pejorative is beyond me. One listen to multi-platinum princess Hamasaki Ayumi’s newest release, My Story, opens up a world of possibilities for pop-rock cross-pollination that our current slew of ingénues can barely imagine.

See, America’s rocker chick revival is fairly recent, which may explain why it still sounds so clean. Adding guitars marked a huge leap of faith in the post-Britney era, and the transition needed to sound as seamless as possible. The resultant Avrils and Ashlees may rock, but it’s tastefully, tamely done, the baby steps necessary after a forced derail from the dance-pop gravy train (more on the inherent silliness of such a split later).

On the other hand, like her fellow countrymen who’ve taken it upon themselves to sustain the careers of Night Ranger, Nelson, and Mr. Big, Ayu isn’t at all averse to pop-metal cheese, which we Yanks appreciate in a VH1-list kinda way but don’t actually want to hear on the radio anymore, despite the fact that it can still be brilliant when properly used. “Moments” seems like innocuous pop-rock fluff until the sweet-ass Guns ‘n’ Roses-styled solo comes out of nowhere and sends it into the stratosphere, never to return. “Liar” and “My Name’s Women” are also coated in the stuff, the former with a riff that exudes twice the sleaze and abandon of “La La” and “He Wasn’t” combined.

Of course, Ayu’s not just a momentary idol that happens to pack a few hot hard-rock licks. She’s arguably Japan’s biggest and most beloved pop star of this millennium, an industry standard that inspires messianic devotion from schoolgirls and salarymen alike.

Not only does Ayu hawk an array of products and set fashion trends as often as most folks do laundry, she delivers at the cash register as well, single-handedly accounting in 2002 for 42.6% of the revenues earned by Japan’s most lucrative record label, Avex.

Certainly savvy marketing plays an estimable role here, but listening to Ayu’s music makes it abundantly clear how she’s able to fill the girl-for-all-seasons role. For one, she pens all of her own lyrics, and while I know you’re already rolling your eyes cuz the authenticity defense is always Dullsville, you have to admit that Ayu’s poetic inclinations lend another fascinating element to her music, and in fact her verses account for a large part of her appeal in her native country (the translations are definitely worth a Google, especially “My Name’s Women,” the most sonically derivative and ridiculously artificial track on the album, which also happens to be a fiercely pro-feminist tirade against sexual exploitation—“Me Against the Music” indeed).

More importantly, however, while American chart pop remains highly compartmentalized (Brit and Jojo’s dance-pop here, Ashlee and Avril’s rock moves there, the more introspective and “serious” Vanessa Carltons somewhere else), Hamasaki gladly salts her club-ready hits with power-chord propulsion and spices up her unrepentant rock with credible beat science. Maybe “About You” sounds like a cut from Under My Skin superimposed with Japanese lyrics, but “Game” is on some next-level ****, initially a New Age red herring that quickly blows up into pure dance-rock madness. Hell, “Inspire” actually sounds sorta Latin even, the kind of groove Paulina Rubio could easily own, but a Japanese girl with a fondness for mall-punk guitars? Muchas gracias, Mr. Roboto.

Originally Posted by walking proud

A lot of Jpop artists have more talent than her and have been working hard to get their name out but only get barely any CD sales because they don't have marketing campaigns- and it only takes Koda Kumi 3 months to get herself in the limelight.. That's kind of disappointing.

Originally Posted by MC Tatsujin

*cough eri nobuchika cough angela aki cough*

Originally Posted by walking proud

I believe that the person that wrote this article was very accurate. I'm not going to comment on the oversexed comment, but I will say something about the whole, "She's managed to make it into the spotlight through a clever marketing campaign" thing. A lot of Jpop artists have more talent than her and have been working hard to get their name out but only get barely any CD sales because they don't have marketing campaigns- and it only takes Koda Kumi 3 months to get herself in the limelight.. That's kind of disappointing.

Originally Posted by tobygirl2020

Right. And the very same thing can be said about Ayumi Hamasaki. You don't think that there were other artists who could sing better and who had better songs when Ayu debuted with weak vocals and bad songs on her first album? That there were other artists who were sturggling to make it big, who weren't discovered in a karaoke bar, who were going from label to label trying to get signed? And yet Ayu made it big with what? Oh yeah clever marketing as well. The girl who could write lyrics, face was everywhere, put out tons of material for fans to gobble up. Koda Kumi and Ayu may have different images, but their promotional techniques really weren't that different. :innocent

And why compare Koda Kumi to artists like Angela Aki or Eri? They are totally different breeds of artists. Kumi is not out there to produce thought provoking material, she said that she wants to make songs that people will sing in karaoke bars and that will be liked by a lot of people. That does not make her worse than those artists. I bet you watch TV shows and read books that hold no thought provoking material, that you read for pleasure, and yet I don't see you complaining about why writers with "more talent" don't have their shows on TV or books on shelves . . . :rolleyes

Let this be a lesson to the thread creator--at AHO, keep all Koda Kumi discussions in her thread, unless you want it to turn into a bash-fest.

Originally Posted by tobygirl2020

Right. And the very same thing can be said about Ayumi Hamasaki. You don't think that there were other artists who could sing better and who had better songs when Ayu debuted with weak vocals and bad songs on her first album?

Originally Posted by truehappiness

Oh, it's not just because of her dressing sexy...

Originally Posted by cybermoomba

how old are you truehappiness? I see nothing wrong with those pics.

Originally Posted by Teresa Nieman

As you can clearly see, J-Pop Will Eat Itself is back. Francis Henville (the original author), however, is not. That would be where I come in.



Like my predecessor, I turned to the confectionary tunes of the East (not to mention their films), after growing bored with what most English-speaking musicians had to offer. As far as I can tell, I also more or less share Henville’s objective: shining a small spotlight onto the J-Pop scene, with hopes of acquainting the unacquainted.

It was about a year ago when I first heard of Shiina Ringo. A friend recommended her music, describing it as “avant-garde.” However vague a term that may be, I was expecting her songs to be pieced-together, art-damaged, achingly hip—and nine minutes long each. What I found instead, were obscenely distracted melodies that ranged from distorto-rock to off-putting hybrids of ska and lounge jazz, starring Ringo’s ever-present pitchy, rolling vocals. Right away—literally, after about 20 seconds of each track in iTunes—I decided to switch to something safer.

I can’t recall when, but eventually these songs popped up again in my playlist. Sometimes I’d be too lazy to change them. Other times, I suppose I didn’t notice it. After a couple of weeks, I was getting strange, near-subliminal urges to find more Ringo. Those songs—their catchiness—had lodged themselves firmly into some part of my brain. I even found myself humming (and, in some unfortunate cases, singing—I don’t even speak Japanese) along whether the songs were actually playing, or I was just in the shower. I had to have more. Within a few days, I’d managed to amass nearly her complete discography (excluding most of her time as frontwoman of the band Tokyo Jihen, where Ringo spends her time these days). With her solo career currently inactive, I thought it would be nice to take a look back at her unique sound and cultural influence over the course of six years and four albums. Shall we?

Shiina Ringo is a rarity in the Japanese pop music scene—she’s a female artist who not only pens her own lyrics, plays instruments, and makes relatively uncommercial music, but she also doesn’t shill products or have back-up dancers. Hers is a fame that no one (least of all her) would have expected.

The first thing you’re likely to notice when tuning into Shiina’s music is the impressively organic (not an electronic sound in sight… or rather, in ear-range) song composition. These are melodies that will hook you—maybe after several listens, maybe right away—whether you like it or not. It’s a talent that, by all accounts, comes naturally to her—and one she’s sustained throughout her entire musical career. This, in itself, is more than enough reason to give Shiina her props—which makes it all the more sweet to find out, for those of us who need English translations, that she is every bit as strong lyrically.

Shiina’s first album was the subversive Muzai Moratorium. It’s a strong set of tracks in which our heroine croons about (amongst other things) life as a struggling artist in the hectic city of Tokyo. This girl-with-big-dreams-in-the-city subject matter is most assuredly nothing we haven’t heard before. Yet somehow—between declarations of love to her guitar amp (“It's so rough / I get off on the smell of the Marshall”), and resentful, mother-directed predictions of her own success (“From tonight onward in this town / I, once the queen's daughter, am now queen”)—she makes them utterly fresh and compelling.

With her follow-up disc, Shousou Strip, Shiina segued into an ever so slightly more upbeat, rock/pop style. This would be my personal favorite of her (album) efforts. The standouts, “Byoushou Public” and “Benkai Debussy” are layered with vocal distortion, guitar flangers, and tricky bass lines. It’s basically Shiina letting her hair down and rocking the pants off anyone who will listen. Granted, neither of those became singles—the main attraction (as far as marketing goes) on Shousou Strip was “Honnou.” The PV for said single saw Shiina performing in a nurse’s outfit and making out with a female patient. Naturally, this image—Ringo, the hot and edgy nurse—became downright iconic. Oh, and it helped that the song was pretty good too.

After a two-disc set of covers (called Utaite Myoli), she released her last solo album, the atmospheric and contemplative Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana. It’s apparent from the lyrics that Shiina is at peace, and ready to move on to better things. A casual listener might guess she’d found love and happiness. An avid fan who’s looked into her personal life would know it to be true. “Souretsu” (“Funeral Concession”) proves that she’s not resting on her laurels, however. It’s an ode to the creative process, and a lament of frustration toward unfinished projects—with abortion as the obvious metaphor. “The courage to give birth, and then scrap something / A knife cutting through thin air,” she sings. “My remains have already been completely disposed of.” As the last song on the album, it’s a fitting, if solemn, epitaph to her solo career.

Lucky for us, there’s still Tokyo Jihen.

Originally Posted by cybermoomba

how old are you truehappiness? I see nothing wrong with those pics.

Originally Posted by truehappiness

....ew. O_O; XD

A little too much information, hm?

And she's 'said' that she really doesn't like doing the sexy image LOL.. whether that's true.. /shrug

Certainly though, if you ask a normal individual what this


looked like to them.. I'm sure they'd be a bit.. '..O_O' XD Again, I know that she has her 'omg i'm so cute' side, but.. yeah at first glance she looks 'oversexed' O-o;

Originally Posted by greggerz189

I just wish she would tone things down a bit and focus more on her music and less on being sexy.

Originally Posted by ayu_fan929

She has though. 'Koi no Tsubomi' was a lot less sexy and the cover of '4 hot wave' isn't that sexy.

Originally Posted by ChrisKay

LOL
truehappiness, where did you get those caps? XD


this one was interesting
I've no idea Violet Sauce could have such meanings LOL now that explains the whispers in anotha recipe

Originally Posted by truehappiness

...didn't 'you' have her and that guy in bed together? o_O;

Originally Posted by truehappiness

...didn't 'you' have her and that guy in bed together? o_O;

Originally Posted by sxesven

It's funny how this writer and these articles are constantly regarded as rather narrow-minded (which they're not), while half the posts I read here are at least twice as narrow-minded, if not more so. Get out of your Asian admiration bubble. Note, I'm not pointing fingers, nor will I do so, and I'm not specifically saying this applies to the posts I quoted.