Quote:
Originally Posted by orbitalaspect
I got to be honest with you, I think you're placing too much credit on an artist's niche and not so much on the artist's overall direction. Watch an Ayumi PV and watch a Namie PV... which artist comes off driven to entertain and impress? I bring up Namie because she's still selling 100,000 DVDs and 250,000 albums... 23 years into her career. So, you know Namie had a wake-up call after STYLE and had to accept that the direction she was taking her career in wasn't working for fans, wasn't working for her, and wasn't living up to her passion.
Ayumi needs that wake-up call. And that's what I'm getting at. If not, she will be just as legendary as Seiko Matsuda fingering herself while holding a Leek for the cover of an album. That's not something I'd want to look back at.
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It seens like you didn't read what I wrote at all, so, here we go:
-Namie is from the 90's and Ayumi is from the 2000's. To the 2010's generation, the 90's are good and classics and 2000's are tacky, old and evil.
- Namie, as a part of the 90's revival, outselling Ayu, as a part of the old boring 2000's, is the most natural thing ever.
- Most artists (99% of them) doesn't get two good decades in a row. That's why several bands end after the first decade and lots of soloists retire from music.
- The ones that keep around tend to perform better on their third decade, when they stop being boring parent music and become classics to the current teenagers. Happened to pretty much every single act that have a long career, even with Namie.
- And again: Ayumi is going a totally new direction aesthetic with at least every two years. Albums like A One, Colours, Party Queen, Love songs, NEXT LEVEL, (miss)understood are nothing alike. And if you watch Premium Showcase, Rock'n'Roll Circus, Power of Music, Hotel Love songs and Cirque de Minuit, they don't even look like a concert from the same artist.
- Namie is an idol, Ayu is an artist (and I'm not saying one is better than the other for it). Namie is about entertaining radio friendly tunes with tons of gloss and very little depth, Ayu is about social comentary and challenging social norms. Of course Namie is by far the most fun of the two.
edit: Also, Ayu is not trying to be a 50 years old lolita like Seiko so far... Actually, everything since Love songs are firmly on the adult helm.