[truehappiness]

These comparisons are a bit ridiculous.

I don't think Ayu has die hard fans as crazy as AKB48's who buy 1000s of copies of each single so that they have tickets to vote for them. I think Ayu will forever be known as the biggest solo female pop artist in Japan with no real Western equivalent except maybe Madonna. To say that she's more of a "Christina Aguilera" doesn't really make sense since Christina never really made all that big of an impact to begin with.

It also should be said that Ayu's music isn't exactly as radio friendly nowadays (which a lot of artists who sell well make regularly a la AKB48/MoMusu and MM also has their handshake tickets and 6-7 versions of a single now) and it hasn't really been catchy-on-the-radio type music since say, Sunrise. There's also a lot of stuff like the news articles/scandals/"suspicious" scoops every year around release that have affected her status in Japan. She's still a legend, but it's hard to deny that things seemed to spiral out of control after the Mannie divorce and ESPECIALLY the Maro split. I wonder what her next release will be featuring the fans' vocals... can't wait to hear it, but I really do hope it's not something that is midtempo for her sake and for most fans' sakes since she hasn't had a light upbeat song in a while.