Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai - View Single Post - New song:『Pray for you』
View Single Post
  #92  
Old 25th January 2021, 03:36 PM
Chibi-Chan Chibi-Chan is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 7,151
Quote:
Originally Posted by orbitalaspect View Post
So, this is 'Ayu' -- which is expected -- but it's like getting more of the same thing when you're fivehead deep in a pool filled with that thing already, and you've spent so long in that pool wading around -- fivehead deep -- believing that initial feel-good experience will come back once more while increasingly pendulous with frustration and apathy over it, you being it, and you wanting to want to be in it but not getting any closer to that ideal.

My initial impressions were that the song sounds like Seiko Matsuda's Baby's breath records sound to fans who were there for albums like 9th Wave. It sounds new and dated at the same time, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if you've heard Seiko's Bara no You ni..., it's impossible to look back on the last 15 years of new Seiko releases and feel remotely as welcoming of them anymore.

I think it's obvious Ayu doesn't want to be pushing out new records/sounds/etc. She may have a big resurgence at some point with one song like Seiko did, or like Nakamori did some years back, but that's going to come out of nowhere and it won't be her working with anyone she's ever worked with. It'll be someone who's figured out some production that rises to the level of BRILLANTE, et. al., but in some way we've never heard Ayu do before.

I'm mostly disappointed with Ayu not writing about this to her fans. I know it's not typical, but Ayu's entire career has emphasized shared loneliness between her and her fans -- that's the point of songs like "curtain call," which was Ayu acknowledging that even as we move on, she has never stopped listening just in case we needed her to let us know so.

I'd really appreciate a letter about this. Even if it reads, "I'm really bored with all of this, and I just want to do tours until I'm completely done." Because again, her commitment in 2007-2008 was that "as a professional" she would never just let things go. If that's changed for one reason or another, from one human being to another, I'd just like to know that I shouldn't wait or come back and check every now and then.

A part of me sees A BALLADS II and thinks, maaaaybe she'll pick it up again?... maybe??. And I can't help that as a fan going back to 2005-2006. But if she's ready to go forward like Amuro was in 2018, I'd just like to see a full finale, a thank you, best wishes, and a final curtain call on the legendary 'A' symbol. I feel like 20+ years deserves a formal farewell. And then she can do her Fukushima residency and spend her days off in rubber boots fishing at the nearest wharf. She can do her own Ayu tees, like, "Ayu-ready A-hole?!!" and "I sold 70 million records and all I got left is a bunch of leftover boxes of these t-shirts."

Anyway, it's OK. But I'd rather not hear stuff like this personally, as it feels like she's "playing" Ayu in a song now. And the whole Ayu brand runs far deeper for most of us than this is willing to acknowledge with effort.

That sounds rude, but it does sound really like the last saltine of a box of saltines for me, personally. If everyone likes it, that's great. I just know that if I were Ayu, I'd have spent the last 9 months revisiting what all of this meant 15-20 years ago -- for all of us, including Ayu -- and I'd be up day and night, exhausted and worked to the bone, to get something like that again given how easily we forgot that it could all so quickly be swept away with no possibility of ever even having the means to do it if we ever wanted to do it again.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. I'm fine with her having changed maybe and simply having other priorities now. But I would like to know. Before every release, where she is teasing us with how good it supposedly is, I'm so disappointed afterwards because there is no real effort, it never compares with the Ayu I fell in love with almost 20 years ago. I also just wish she would let us know and be like "see guys, atm I'm not feeling like doing what I did for so many years, I'm having more fun releasing whatever from time to time and want to mostly perform". Then I wouldn't expect what I did expect from her years ago and would just be happy that she found a place where she is happy. But her being like "this is the best release evaaaa" everytime kind of feels as if she wants her fans to stay around, wants to keep them hooked, even though she knows they expect something different from her and this feels kind of "unfair", given that a lot of us walked that way with her for two decades.
Reply With Quote