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Cover Story: Ayumi Hamsaki, why another Best album?
1) Year 2007 and 2008 are called the years of the best album because artists such as Koda Kumi, EXILE, B’z and Namie Amuro decided to release one.
It’s her “BEST FICTION”, the most awaited from fans and from critic, which can’t wait to confirm or deny a probable turning back to the Golden Age of Amuro’s sales.
A few days before the releasing of this album, on the web there was a suspecting spoiler: another Ayumi Hamsaki Best album.
Ayumi Hamsaki is one of the most famous pop singer in Japanese pop music world.
Her albums and singles reach always the first positions of the official national billboard and Ayumi is still classed fourth in global sales with 47 millions albums sold.
Tokyonoise.net has soon reported the news of the release of “A COMPLETE -ALL SINGLES-“ of Ayumi for the 10th September, highlighting the strangeness of the sudden issue.
1 year and half ago was infact issuing “A BEST 2 –BLACK & WHITE” including the last songs most beloved and successful of the artiste.
The release, 6 years and 1 month after the first “A BEST”, it seemed pretty coherent.
The fault of this second best was the choice of editing 4 different album versions (perfect for the collectionists) much expensive and visually not so interesting.
The album didn’t reach the spectacular sales of the first Best, which eventhough the hard challenge with Hikaru Utada’s “Distance”, reached almost 1400000 copies sold.
After the issue of her 9th album in December 2007 titled “GUILTY” Ayumi seemed to want to take a little break from new issues in order to concentrate herself totally to concerts and tours.
After a long silence lasted a lot of months the unbelievable news come unexpected in the end of July. Why she made this choice? We know well that who is considered the queen of J-Pop has the total control on her musical career (we can notice that in the little deed to turn at last second “Secret” from mini to complete album). We do know too that even Ayumi had a huge promotion for her releases (pretty about 1 issue per year) she isn’t a fan of best albums.
“A BEST” was released in 2001 the same day of the issue of Utada’s second album; the first sold 4295000 disks, the second 4469000. Ayumi told that the tear of the cover meant her refusing the issue in the same Utada’s day.
After reaching a great result rising up her success a declaration matched her fans’ hearts: “ Next Best album will mean the end of my career”.
There wasn’t like that. Ayumi continued producing new songs even after.
All these elements underline the importance of these collections for one of the strongest Japanese singer and so also the strangeness of this issue with such a short distance from “A BEST 2”.
This certainly reminds “A BALLADS” in 2003, which is different from a common best because includes some singles within a peculiar theme. There are various guesses that try to give a reason to this sudden release, some bolder some more concrete. A part of audience criticize Ayumi assumpting that Ayumi wants to challenge Amuro for the album of the year.
“BEST FICTION” infact take over a million of copies after only 2 weeks,sales that the artiste didn’t reach since 1998. Exit from competition one of the most dangerous rival as Utada Hikaru, Ayumi confirms her success starting from that year, but now she’s finding herself competing with a singer with more experience (Namie works with Avex Trax since 1995, Ayumi since 1998). Is it truly the battle to crown the queen of Hip-Pop? Truly Hamasaki wants to concentrate the attention on her to shadow Namie? The gooddest fans were happy after the announcement of the new best, just to make bigger their collection. Moreover the DVD contains some never edited live of concerts and a-nation exhibitions helping sales; and because she doesn’t announce any new release since 5 months the best seems to be a good starting point. Moreover Ayumi updated 2 times her official blog talking about a new song that makes her apparently proud. Her activities seem now clearer. Indeed the 3CD+DVD version is so cheap (almost 30 euros) is surely a good help: infact lot of fas are buying both versions.
Despite this the choosen covers don’t attract much the fans’ spirit: covers have been crtiticized though they seemed too much to A BEST 2 BLACK & WHITE booklets’covers; moreover the atmosphere of colours remind to much GUILTY. Lot of people thought songs were re-sung instead they were only re-recorded; someone had just bought A BEST 2 and with its cost they don’t even think to buy another simile album.
The promotion began lot of time before the issue so everybody was waiting to see how 2008 will change. As a result the album had great sales the first days followed by a big down. “A COMPLETE ALL SINGLES” sold the first day 198000 CDs, went down the second day to 119000 and arrived the 3rd day at 54000 copies.
The path seems the same as B’z’ BEST Ultra pleasure that saw stopping its sales at 900000 copies. Ayumi confirms herself as the great first days seller but not the queen in long times.
Many ask what was going to happen if Ayumi didn’t create her A BEST 2…most probably A COMPLETE SINGLES was going to be an unrepeated success.