Yeah, I sadly have to agree.
In the last Heisei poll I saw, made by one of the big newspaper companies, they randomly asked about 5000 Japanese people and Ayu didn't even pop up (Namie Amuro won).
Granted she's in most the others I've seen, but you guys talking about it reminded me of that.
And I've also seen several articles about her losing her own identity as an artist and more and more copying other artists like Namie Amuro and Koda Kumi.
I've also skipped through the Numero Tokyo interview now and one answer struck me.
She was asked what's the most important thing for her regarding her 20th Anniversary and she answered "the pride for the brand Ayumi Hamasaki".
Couldn't help but chuckle a bit about that answer.
Sure, if you look at those 20 years as a whole her career is absolutely amazing and she achieved what nobody else achieved. A legend!
But looking at the past few years I can't help but feel this answer is a bit of a mocking.
Even though she does acknowledge the achievements as well as the mistakes in the sentence after that, and that the brand does not consist of her alone, I do feel like she and her team lost the connection to the industry as well as the audience in recent years to handle "the brand Ayumi Hamasaki".
That answer makes it sound like she does rely on her past instead of moving forward.
Quote:
Originally Posted by attractive nausea
Actually, she has managed to sing a lot of different songs during all of these tours. There is someone on the forum who made a list of all the different songs she has performed during her tours (+a-nation) since CDL 2016-2017 and there are plenty of them, it was impressive to see. If this person sees my post feel free to post this list again here. Sure, there are some songs that she sings too often and it makes us feel like it's always the same (for instance Bold & Delicious needs to die, she's sung this one too many times now) but it's not really the case.
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I guess that really shows one of the main problems - objectively she's giving a lot and is not lazy at all with touring, but subjectively people are coming out of her concerts and feel like they've seen the same again?
Simply changing the songs probably is not enough if you're constantly touring without new releases.