Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrenekoi
@orbitalaspect What Japanese people will or will not think about Ayu actions is both none of our business and a little too much for us to try to pintpoint in a country with 126,8M people. Neither will she be loved by all, or most, or even half of those people, neither should she try to be. Utada's First Love is the best selling album in that market and it wasn't sold to 10% of that population.
Ayu as a public figure was always controversial to some extent, from the topless album cover back in the end of the 90's, to pretty much every single time she was way too much for what they expect from an ideal woman, something she is doing one way or another since the begining of her career. Besides those who jumped on the train when she was big, and left once the was past her prime, her career was never really designed to appeal to someone with much of an idealized image of what their idol should be.
In that sense she has lived and acted more as an artist, testing the bounderies of her own culture, and had been far braver in doing that than her peers.
Her iconic status is safe. Seiko Matsuuda was VERY scandalous for most of her career and she still is an icon. And it's just natural younger generations to know her better for her gossip than for her music, as she didn't released a big hit in a while.
We can say Utada, for example, played her cards better in a market point of view. What also means she isn't singing about several stuff she clearly wanted to, considering her USA releases. We can say Namie also played her cards better, but Namie admitelly was following trends as a way to keep the public coming back until her retirement date arrived.
Ayu wants to be free to express what she wants on the way she wants. Freedom is even a huge theme in her body of work, and on her case, being free will also be scandalous a she herself deviates from the norm of her own culture and already did before she was famous.
Calling her culturally unaware, when she released a full album and tour about this subject not too long ago, or even questioning her mental healthy (WTF?) is really fucked up.
I don't like to mention Chibi-Chan on my posts because I even blocked her. But someone who prides herself on being a feminist questioning a woman's mental health because she is giving her middle finger to how patriarchy wants her to act on her own society totally rubs me the wrong way.
Edit:
primavera♥ is like the best person to ever exist on this forum and God bless, we need her xD
Also, Ayu doesn't frequently sings about breaking the rules, true. She usually just go there and break them.
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The point isn't whether she'll still be an icon, it's that, as voltron pointed out, people can and will look back on that time differently based on their impression of her now. I certainly wouldn't want someone jumping into "OMG didn't she have like two husbands and date her dancers and then she did some book about having a relationship with her manager..." when I bring up her work. But that's what happens when scandalous stuff is more relevant to an artist more recently than their actual work.
Everyone remembers Akina Nakamori as a huge success, and one of Seiko's biggest rivals, but her failed relationship and her drama with it practically destroyed her career in the late 80s. And while she's still known for that legacy, she's also known for being the idol that had a public meltdown over another idol she dated.
Same case with Seiko and her jealousy of other singers. She's widely known for being extremely jealous of her fading spotlight while other singers, even artists that preceded her, held onto their audiences.
People are human, and it's not like Ayu would never have had scandal one way or another. I mean, we all remember why she wrote alterna. We all remember Microphone. She's been very public through her career about her frustrations with the industry. But stuff like this book, like her love life, is just so easily avoidable. It's all on her that these scandals happen. She could get a therapist instead of desperately rushing into relationships with guys that work for her or foreigners who don't know the first thing about Japan or her career or her fans. Like, talk to someone, don't play this out when you know the public eye is on you like this.
And TROUBLE was not an album. It was a pretty low effort release, even if it had a few great songs. By comparison, KOKIA has nowhere near the resources Ayu does, and she recorded Tokyo Mermaid in the same amount of time, and that album was just as good as the 14 albums she had released before it. Hell, Koda Kumi put out FOUR albums between 2017 and 2018, and all four of them were more effort.
Like how these debates usually go, it's only unfair if we criticize the things you like. And it's perfectly normal for you to criticize the things we defend. The only reason someone would block Chibi is because you can't stand a woman who fully considers what is and isn't within her immediate control before giving her opinion. It's an extra step in the critical thinking process. And to be honest, if any of us had a years long mysterious relationship with our boss, we'd all be asked to get our heads examined too.