|
I've been following Ayu and Jpop in general for 12 years. Yes, she IS legendary. Absolutely.
If you listen to jpop from 1997 to 1999, there is a HUGE jump in quality. Ayu's sound CHANGED jpop, especially jpop for solo female artists. There's Jpop before Ayu, and jpop after ayu. you can hear a marked change in quality with artists like Amuro Namie, globe, Every Little Thing, and Puffy who were around both before and after ayu really became popular. It wasn't "poker face" that changed things, it was the "LOVEppears" era of singles. They were very unusually polished and, for lack of a better term, "thick" sounding. Ayu was a very unusually modern, futuristic sounding artist. Japan was finally catching up to the west in mixing & production tactics at that point, and everyone else had to play catch up. Ayu's perfectionism meant that after LOVEppears, the rest of jpop sounded REALLY REALLY dated, and REALLY REALLY fast.
Ayu's career as someone with any measure of influence really started with the trifecta of WHATEVER, ayu-mi-x, and LOVE~Destiny~. Once those releases cemented her place as a pop powerhouse on both sides of the pop spectrum - dance and ballads - and did so with tracks that were EXTREMELY well-produced and ironed out, that was when people really started paying attention to her. Other record labels saw her as a problem and pitted her against singers like Ami Suzuki and Utada Hikaru in sales "battles." At this point, EVERYONE was "up against" ayu. Even when Ayu was beaten (and in both of the above cases she was), it was always so-and-so versus Ayu. Ayu was always the constant.
Idols, actresses, and singers soon started emulating her style. I remember gravure idol Anzai Hiroko - she started sporting very SEASONS-ish curly blond hair & sun hats. Ayu's HAL-produced sound became so in demand, HAL produced a PLETHORA of jpop groups & songs between 2000 and 2004. When they got their own pop group, they got an aidoru who they dolled up to have the big eyes, pouty face look that Ayu was famous for at the time.
Her effect is lasting, too - Nishino Kana, for example, is a VERY clear derivative of ayu. Even less obvious influence appears in artists like Angela Aki. Ayu made it officially okay for female singers to have self-penned songs & connect emotionally with their audience. Most successful pop stars before Ayu did NOT do that, and even when they did (like, for example, Ann Lewis in the 80's), there wasn't a lasting trend that was created. Ayu bridged the gap between self-made and label-manufactured pop stars in a big way.
|