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The Girlpop interview from December 1999 is actually REALLY revealing about her state of mind after the A single (which I think did go into the "Duty" album a bit)...
She doesn't go into her reasons for it, but it seems that during the recording of "A" is when she started thinking she was ready to leave avex & stop singing. When "A" came out she didn't watch any music programs on TV, she didn't look at rankings - if she happened to see sales figures on TV by accident she'd change the channel as quickly as she could. She'd written "too late" as a sort of "goodbye letter" without really saying so in interviews or anything at the time, but fan messages & emails were like "This song feels like Ayu is going away, and I don't like it!" In the Girlpop interview Ayu said that the fans who sent those messages were actually pretty on point, and that she was actually VERY sure she wanted to stop... She apparently said she'd take some time to think about it after "A," even though she was pretty certain, but she did take that time - She actually spent about a month not coming into contact with anything that had to do with music, and then saw how she felt afterwards.
Fun fact, ayu had no idea what the sales figures were for "A" until after LOVEppears was done being made, and her reaction was just "...Eh?" lol
I'm still working on translating this interview... it's got some pretty interesting stuff, I'm really sad I never worked on it until now actually.
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