A Song for Who?
 

(Sorry for the weird thread name; I just couldn't resist XD)

So, this is a strange question, but I was wondering which person Ayu dedicated her "dedicated to someone" songs to? I know the names of them (teddy bear, untitled ~for her~, Memorial address, Who..., ASFXX, etc.) and I've figured out some:

Memorial address: her father
untitled: her friend (?)
Who...: her grandma

However, I'm not sure about the rest, so could someone kindly tell me? Thanks a bunch and sorry for the confusing question X___X

ASFXX - mother
Memorial address and teddy bear - father
Who.../ever free - grandma
MY ALL - herself
untitled - her friend who died in 2007
Life - friend who passed away in 2008
RED LINE - for her fans
HONEY - Tomoya Nagase
TO BE - Max Matsuura

interesting, everytime i listen to My Honey i have feeling that this song is dedicated to Nagase :D

and Who for her grandma? really? i didnt know that,i thought it for fans ;)

another one, NO Way To Say-her father(?)

thanks a lot for those explainations

Present was created for her fans, or rather those who listened to the entire album (she wanted it to be a hidden track).
SIGNAL is a song she wrote whilst waiting for traffic lights to change. XD

AUDIENCE is most likely fan song.

evolution was written to welcome the new millennium, I guess.
M was inspired by a story about a saint called Maria, most like this is Mary Magdalene (Virgin Mary isn't a saint).
A Song is born is written about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Real me honours women. :D
HANABI is most likely also about her grandmother and Ayu said it is to reflect the sadness of summer's end.
July 1st talks about her friends who she rarely has a chance to see except on July 1st.
Dolls was inspired by a film of the same name.
Close to you is a Christmas song.
independent is meant to have a baseball theme.

RAINBOW's lyrics are based upon those sent in by fans.

my name's WOMEN is another feminist song.
Moments and CAROLS are most likely also about Tomoya.
walking proud was recently discovered to be written about an old friend.

Born To Be... is meant to have a sports/athletic theme to it.
Beautiful Fighters is another song about women.

Mirror(cle World) is probably a reflection of the time when she announced her hearing loss?
fated and Together When... are probably about Tomoya.

Sunrise is written from the point of view of a father.
Sunset is the same theme from the daughter's perspective.

No way to say's PV is supposedly connected to her father via fan speculation.

Memorial address and teddy bear: her father
untitled ~for her~ and MY ALL (speculation): her friend, ANEKI aka Ayumi Ogata [I think]
Who... and ever free (apparently?): her grandmother
ASFXX: her mother aka Mariko Hamasaki (I believe that the XX stood for her mother at the time... it was in an interview.)
RED LINE ~for TA~: TeamAyu [all fans] and Bacchi who passed away some time in 2008... (lyrics came from entry about him in TeamAyu and title from the red bracelets that Ayu wears along with Tsuriko to remember Bacchi.)
HONEY: Tomoya Nagase

I think only a handful of these are confirmed for sure... many are speculated, IIRC...

Life was the song he wanted to listen to. He liked Life and wanted to hear it before passing away, as he was living when the song was created and passed away about half a year later.

Why do you take the name out of quotes? That's really ignorant and annoying. :\
I realize it wasn't about his death, but I believe it was written about him in general.

I copy-paste them from the posts if I don't want quote the whole post, so the names don't carry over. I don't see the problem with quoting by copy-pasting into the Quick Reply box, haha.

I don't think he was dying at the time of Life though... I think he did have some sort of condition though. Who knows really, but all we do know is that he wanted to listen to it via her blog. (Oh jeez, rereading those blog entries makes me want to cry, oh my... apparently the last time Ayu had seen him was the day that Mirrorcle World came out, and he'd passed away about 6 months after...)

She's also mentioned numerous times that the "XX" in that title is meant so anybody can fill it in with whatever they're feeling at the time. She's said a lot of things about that song... (I know, I'm writing an analytic thesis about it x.x)

Ah, I see. I do remember though that at the time she said that along with the mother thing...
She was pretty harsh to her mother in that interview, but... I guess it made sense seeing as how her mom was barely there when she was growing up.

I honestly didn't know teddy bear was about her dad. I thought it was about her lover.

Virgin Mary IS a saint and the japanese name of this song is "Holy Mother" or something like that...

And there are tons of threads about this subject... In the end of the day, she never said who most of those songs were dedicated to...

Thank you for your replies, everyone! I never knew there were so many she's written for other people~!

i always thought Teddy Bear is about her mother XD looks like she really miss her father =(

I didn't know about the song Life, well the story behind it I mean. But I think I love that song a bit more now. I think that it's been really underrated.

But who is Bacchi?


You know how there's a thread somewhere about her dancers? A while back I was thinking that maybe somebody should construct a thread about those closest to Ayu. There are a lot of names of people close to her that show up sooo often, and people who haven't been around for a long time won't know much about these people. Unfortunately, I don't know enough for me to do this, which is really a shame.


I was always sure teddy bear and Memorial Address were for her dad; the 2003-2004 performance just fit so well it was perfect that I couldn't miss the meaning in it.

I watched a documentary where she said The XX of the album ASFXX was supposed to be her dad, she couldnt remember his name.
The song in general was about her lonelyness when she moved to Japan. She said that she always thought her mother's life was lonely but she didnt realize how lonely SHE was until she moved to Tokyo

For what I understood in her messages she did Life for bacchi. Me, at the moment "life" was released, I thought it was a second part of untitled because it repeated some lines.. but with a positive feeling... and we didn't know about Bacchi so everyone thought of untitled and the same friend...

And for me... Teddy Bear is for her mother... she talks about a person who isn't with her all time, and how there's a "teddy bear" in her place: You weren't always there for me, but we could laugh together at funny stories. she has also said that she doesn't see her mother as a mother... but not sure

And I had a crazy theory abou "July 1s" being abou her father's dead or sth (HEY!, I don't know if her father is dead, but I think so because of memorial address)

In memorial address we all know she's talking about her father. I think about "dead" because of "the eternal parting" ayu is talking about. And then "I will never forget that first day of summer" = July 1st? Then, look at memorial address booklet, where ayu has a mirror with a 0630 written with lipstick. That's 30th of June, 1 day before July 1st.

And then we go to July 1st and...: "If it's fine tomorrow, I will go to see you" She is talking from 30/06 about tomorrow 01/07, to go to that sea: "If it's fine tomorrow, I will go to that sea", maybe the place of one of Ayu's few memories about her father, going fishing in Fukuoka to the pier? I think she's forgiving her father with July 1st, "Changing the pain with the tears shed yesterday Into tenderness".

that's my theory... xd

That's actually a lovely lovely theory! I really like it =]

makes perfect sense to me ^^ well spotted

I didn't know info about some of these songs. Thanks~
I also think Secret might be dedicated to her father or maybe Tomoya. If not for them then definitely to somebody else.

She has mentioned in the past that July 1st is when she'd meet a ton of friends or something and party her heart out after work, but it is possible.. maybe?

This is a very clever theory! I like it! :yes

Wow you put alot of thought into that!
really makes sense! :yes

i like your theory,it makes sense ;)

just for the Memorial Address, for the first part :

I remember I went to sleep late that night feeling uneasy
And had a very sad dream
The phone started to ring in the morning, breaking the silence
And the premonition became a reality
Leaving an unfading scar on my heart
You became a star by yourself

maybe 0630 written on the mirror also means 6.30 am whe she got the call about the sad news. ;)

the line that makes me quite sure this is about her father:

I wish I could have heard from you
That I had certainly been loved by you

because i think she really wants a father's love like other kids :(

PS: didnt she told in the 2004/2005 documentary that her grandma passed away in the morning she recorded Poker Face?

Having taken in a lot of what is written here, I really become more and more convinced that the entire Memorial Address mini-album was inspired by her father.

I think that at some point her dad came back into her life, possibly even with an illness, and was about to pass away when he got to know her.

Angel's Song deals a bit with loneliness at first, but then coming across the special person that really came in like a miracle, at the right time. Maybe at the time having a dad was like a new experience, and him coming back wasn't a bad thing to her because of it being new.

Greatful Days talks about great summer days, which would definitely make sense with her memory of being with him at that pier in her hometown. Even more if July 1st is linked to him. The sort of feeling that July 1st has, is rather similar to Greatful Days I think, not just because it's a summer song or anything but there's this feeling of it that matches.

Because of You was a song I always thought was inspired by her dad. By Because of You I think she wants a bit of an explanation. Maybe at this point she sort of realizes he might be ill, and after the great days she's had she's scared that she won't be able to go back to a time where she was strong without him.

Ourselves really tells about how much someone knows about a person, that there'll always be a little bit we keep to ourselves, but always a little bit we show. Maybe with her dad there was a part of her she allowed herself to show easily.

Then we've got Hanabi~Episode II~. As far as I can remember, in an interview she had said that the reason she brought up Hanabi again, and the slightly similar melody, is because the feeling she suddenly had was very much alike to when she wrote the first Hanabi. They both are pretty sad but in their own way, but somewhat positive also.

With No Way to Say, everyone has had loads of thoughts that ring true with me about the PV. Even the song itself is pretty telling. I think amongst the things she thought she couldn't quite say, was that like she'd thought in Because of You, she couldn't bring herself to go back entirely to the time where she was strong alone. Once you live a life without your dad, you build this somewhat self reliance with yourself, once he might've come back it's like a lot of the strength you prided yourself on crumbled.

forgiveness right after it tells that eventually she'll get over it in a way. That the mistakes and fights are just things people do. Maybe that also despite the hardships she'll look forward to tomorrow, and won't give up, even if something is gone.

Memorial Address itself doesn't need an explanation. It's pretty self-explanatory at that point because the words are just so clear. Having lost something that you tried to keep close to you, even if it wasn't for a long time at all, it's still sad, and once it's gone you realize there really were a lot of things that you wished you'd asked.

Again the summer is brought up, so aside from just being a figure of speech, like a change in times and surroundings, it could be rather literal; the first day of summer obviously has some meaning to her.


I suppose it's not the first time one of us have heard the supposedly 'corny' story of a person realizing they're dying, and going back to try and fix their mistakes or come to terms with a lot of things. Could've been her dad did just that and obviously she's got to ask herself, why did he leave creating memories to the very end? Though I guess it's a question that doesn't clearly come up in the song, maybe she has to ask herself if he did it for his own piece of mind, or

Also, I don't think she ever talked about the actual events because she felt Memorial Address as a mini album said everything needed to say. Even more her performances at the 2003-2004 live, especially the teddy bear/Memorial Address combination. Another reason could be was she truly was bothered by it in a way. At the beginning of her career she made a big show of not caring whether he was in her life or not, and maybe when he came back she realized she cared, which is why in No Way to Say she says

Hm, just to add on to your Memorial address theory... here is the translated version of her track by track interview about the album, translated by Delirium-Zer0.

Abit off topic. But Ayu never Sang "Life" Live has she?

I would think that song would be quite nice seeing it perform live :yes

She performed it once during an AT08 encore, it was never recorded or put on DVD though, I think we only knew about it from one of the fan reports.

Truehappiness, where do you find all these articles? They seem really interesting to read! :D

They are all here at AHS for the most part, haha.

Ahh.. Thankyou... Lol i remember the first time i listened to Life and i enjoyed it but i stopped listening to it until i read this thread haha... Now im just listening to it like almost all the time xD

I'm usually the type of person who could repeatly listen to the same songs over and over until i finally get bored of it xD~ but it comes back eventually :innocent

thanks truehappiness for putting up that article,
it was so nice reading it again ^^

I'm actually aware of that interview, which is definitely interesting to read again.

Especially for Because of You, I know she says the song was born from what her friend said but I had always thought about it like, isn't it often we talk to our friends about something worrying, and then they tell us a similar story of their own, but show us that their views of it are different? It's happened to me numerous times, and I've written about those sorts of things. It makes me think that maybe Ayu's friends reasoning helped Ayu bring what she wanted to say to words in that song.

I'm loving all of these theories....they make sense and are great! Thanks for sharing your ideas! :D

that's what i have always wondered about ayu, how is her relationship to her mother? after reading masa's articles and interviews like this, i strongly had the feeling that she didn't really like her mother and hence didn't have much contact to her.
that and ayu calling Mika Noguchi (of peach john) "mama" seemed as she has replaced her real mother... although i don't know how serious is with that, but she seems much closer with her... but she seems much closer to her than to her real mom. how painful it must be if your daughter calls somebody else mother...

then again, ayu's real mom was recently more mentioned, in blogs and she watches over ayu's dogs and what not, so she seems to have more contact with her now. maybe she has forgiven her mother and they are closer again...


i am really interested if ayu really met her father at one point of her life... would be interesting, but i doubt we will ever know for sure. i don't know if memorial adress is really about her father, if so, i wonder if he really died?

/end rant

^ Well, she's mended her relationship with her mother I've heard..

Woah is that true!? I'd always wondered what the lyrics meant but that makes total sense.

Yeah, she clearly has mended her relationship with her mom. A while back I even remember a little debate about whether her mom getting her own store was with or without Ayu's help.

By the sound of Ayu's blogs, things with her mom are going well. She speaks of her quite affectionately, at least.

Perhaps! I could be completely wrong though. :)

Yeah! I remember Ayu saying though that her mum was more of a friend to her. :)

I think MW is reflections about wtf should she do after her 10 years career... pretty much like Duty was about what should she do after her peak

? But Duty was during her peak, no? It sold more than A Song for xx and more than LOVEppears so I doubt that. Actually it's her best selling studio album.

But as far as Mirrorcle World goes that's plausible too but I like the idea of the song being about screaming to the world about the backlash that there was. I mean, I've even spoken to Japanese fans who don't support her anymore because she's "worse" now since then, the media coverage, and then there was the thing with Avex stocks dropping horribly right?

^ Yeah, Duty was during her peak, but he's saying what she would do after the peak was completely over. In Duty, she talks about seeing the end of an era; like, it's still clearly here, but she can see it falling, so...yeah.

I honestly never thought about Mirrorcle World being about her career..... Does make sense, though.

Yeah, but did you not read the lyrics? This has nothing to do with how the albums sold.
"My era will end next."

I feel that until that Day..., Mirror/Mirrorcle World, alterna and Secret are all works about her career including Duty, haha.

Oh, and as for Ayu not being liked by Japanese fans, all the ones I've spoken to have said nothing but good things about her... it's just that all their favorite songs come from earlier on in her career. [M, evolution, appears, etc.] I would say that some Japanese people probably just got tired of her like they're getting tired of -insert act here- but by no means is she becoming "worse" than -insert time period here-...

Wow, I had never read those lyrics before! I can't believe she wrote that. I only own a couple of the songs off Duty. I thought what Andrenekoi meant was that she wrote Duty after her peak, but I misunderstood or read to fast.

I'm not talking about liking songs (and yeah, everyone's favorites are pre2005), I'm talking about their current opinion of her and how they think that her current talent is less of what is used to be thanks to the deafness of her ear. Of course that's not the case with ALL former fans but still. I don't agree with that though.

i always thought it was only thanks to ayu she got that store. which surprised me the first time i stumbled upon that, because i thought she disliked her/ayu never mentioned her. didn't know her mom had a store for a long time either. but yeah, i guess if your daughter is rich and famous you pay more attention to her :/ at least ayu seems very forgiving.

Rather than saying she paid attention to her once she got famous; Ayu was able to help her mother more, this probably made her mother need to work a bit less, which made more room for her to spend time with Ayu. I'm sure their relationship didn't sort out completely right away or anything.

Ayu's always been pretty forgiving I think, and despite her initial hard feelings towards her mother, I think after some time she could see things from her mother's point of view and she understood what it was like. In understanding there'll be forgiveness.

Whether Ayu's mom is like Ayu, and worked extremely hard to get to where she is (her own store) or whether Ayu helped her get it, it shows the two are closer together anyway, since Ayu clearly talks about her mom's store and promotes it quite well.

Yeah, remember her answer for TalkAsia?

That bit is a great part of that interview; I love the interview all together actually.

But yeah, I think Ayu possibly got a lot of her drive from her mom, who obviously worked very hard. So it makes sense to say that maybe her mom worked on her own to get to her dream of having this great store (because by pictures, it really looks like a great store!) but then it could've been that Ayu did help her out. I think that's where their relationship could've started to repair.

I was thinking of this while seeing everyone's posts! :laugh

it's true, though... Ayu forgives her mother and really does care for her and accept her :D

Ayu is so sweet :)

I know, she's just so lovely :yes

yeah, that. it was the contrast of interviews i read, once she didn't talk all too positive about her, (although not bashing her) but then again, in other interviews, she was praising her XD i just thought calling another woman "mama" as very strange :innocent

so yeah, the relationship to her mother seems to be good now, but i got the feeling ayu is still more connected to mika.

I think we just need to see that Ayu has a relationship with her mother that a lot of us do; during different times in our lives we see our mothers differently.

^Yeah, she was a teenager (and based on her interviews, a very annoying one xD)

She's more public with her relationship to Mika, so of course we/you feel like that. She rarely ever speaks about her mom because she doesn't need to! Most celebs don't go on and on about their real mothers anyway... it'd be a bit childish to say "Oh, my mummy..." during every other interview, haha.

A normal teenager you mean, as many teenagers ARE annoying.

She always give me the "I'm so amazing and the world is so dumb to notice" kind of teenager feeling xD

^ hahaha... how so? XD

TO BE is for Max? why??

@aura, you're really discovery it! I love your theory!

Teenagers are always annoying. I'm a teenager too but having this kind of teenagers feeling make me tired.