Thoughts on CDL 09-10?

[Negi92]

Originally Posted by Coelacanth

My face after finishing the concert:

Spoiler:

Seriously, her voice was awful. I really wish I could have liked it, I really do... But man, wtf was that? I am... and Moments were pretty good, I'll give her that.. but then it started to all go downhill after them. Even her stage presence isn't that great anymore, because she looks like she's passing a kidney stone when she's singing. Just watch I am... at AT02, she's belting that **** out proud and tall, now she's all constipated and hunched over. Ayu, please don't tour in 2010...

God, it's like dealing with an alcoholic in denial. GET SOME HELP.

I don't mean to be melodramatic.. I just.. want SO bad for her to sound GOOD.

Nothing to add. Her voice was awful, really ! And the sound was awful too, sometimes, I couldn't hear her at all O_O ! No really, that was a bad CDL, a really bad one ! And I think the title should have been :

Countdown Live 2009-2010 ~ Tours Remix ~ A

[Picaflor 7/4]

I thought her voice was great during some songs. I am was really amazing. although I hated the recycled opening video from 2001.
I didnt' like because of you. her voice was just terrible.
I didn't like pride/momentum either. mainly cause it had that very "typical ayu" singing while two people ballet on stage and she's frowns and reaches her arm out to them. Cause we haven't seen this before a hundred times right?
I didn't like the cutsey outfit for step you/energize, but I thought all the other outfits were cool. I really loved the ladies night remix inbetween step you and energize. It sounded pretty cool.
about you dissappointed me. The original performance from my story was amazing with the chains and the paint like outfits. This time around she was alone on stage with her band, it wasn't that good of a performance anyways. Peco and princess need to be fired asap. I have no problem with ayu singing by herself.

[Corvina]

Ok, I've watched the whole thing now.

The first half I already judged is ok vocally, not good, but ok.
But the rest... was awful. Pride, INSPIRE, Because of You were so bad, even worse than anything she did in AT09. Ayu destroyed those songs for me and I'm really, really sad about that, cause they belong to my favourites from her.
It was a bit better after the countdown, but still bad.
How do you guys manage to enjoy the show although her vocals are so bad? I can't , I just can't ignore the bad vocals, cause sometimes it hurts in my ears, sorry to say.
In BoY I also had the feeling that the song was too fast for Ayu to catch up with.
Overall she uses her dancers too much (her normal dancers as well as those others). There were so much people on stage sometimes. o.O
I don't like most of the outfits as well, I only like the first and the white one.

I love the stage though and some of the probs, although most of them are recycled.

Summary: Great setlist, nice try, but too bad vocals too enjoy. At least for me.
And if Ayu doesn't begin to train her voice again she'll get even worse.

[pchan1986]

im at work right now so im unable to watch the concert -_- it seems to happen to me a lot these days. but after reading all the comments. i feel bummed out. I LOVED PCDL08-09 and altho this cdl doesnt have as much songs as last year. i was hoping for it to turn out great anyways. i will have to see tomorrow for sure of my thoughts.

[noidea]

People always tend to forget that this concert very likely is playbackfree, there you have the reason for her bad vocals, but I prefer a concert that's completely live with poor vocals over a concert that has relativly bad vocals for the songs that are live and a handful of playback songs. And I actually didn't think it was that bad vocally, AT09 hurt, CDL0708 hurt, this didn't and considering that most songs in this concert are WAY harder to sing then all the NEXT LEVEL songs and(again) probably has no playback that's really great.

[SunshineSlayer]

^ Really? Cause for me I rate this even worse vocally than CDL 07-08.

Originally Posted by milky_way

Her vocals in Because of You were a hot ass mess, and I can't really see how anyone could say otherwise

^ Her vocals were that way for most of the concert imo. I can't believe she actually thinks touring even more next year is a good idea. Eeek, gotta finish my full review.

[noidea]

For me it's bad vocally if the vocals distract me from the overall performance and/or have me stop watching, that happened for both cdl0708 and at09 before, but I looped this CDL 4 times now and they only were really BAD for seconds, weaker than usual, yes, but bad? no

For me this still is the best concert I've ever watched. I can finally call myself an ayu fan without being ashamed for her playbacking

[Mai82Go]

I don't get all the hate either. I really enjoyed the concert. I think some people should just relax and move on to other singers or at least away from Ayu. What's the point of staying when you cannot even enjoy a concert anymore because you hate the costumes/her stage-presence/the vocals/Shuya/whatever? Ayu obviously never pleases, no matter what she does. I really don't see what you guys were expecting from CDL? That it would be flawless and perfect? Then you obviously didn't follow her performances over the last years. Or would you prefer a lipsynched concert?

[SunshineSlayer]

^ No. Even I still find the concert enjoyable. And I have watched every performance she has ever done and what to expect is something that could be way better than this. Her vocals are seriously becoming a major problem and its only going to keep getting worse unless she actually takes the initiative to really change something. Yet instead, she's already announced that she will perform more concerts next year than she ever has.

[Maemi]

Originally Posted by Mai82Go

I don't get all the hate either. I really enjoyed the concert. I think some people should just relax and move on to other singers or at least away from Ayu. What's the point of staying when you cannot even enjoy a concert anymore because you hate the costumes/her stage-presence/the vocals/Shuya/whatever? Ayu obviously never pleases, no matter what she does. I really don't see what you guys were expecting from CDL? That it would be flawless and perfect? Then you obviously didn't follow her performances over the last years. Or would you prefer a lipsynched concert?

Nobody expects her to be perfect, because she can't be, of course. I also find some flaws in her old concerts, but I still call them great and enjoyable because Ayu simply sings well People also mostly come to her concerts because of atmosphere, and not her great singing skills. I mean, she used to have great singing skills before. The costumes and dancers aren't important, but when an artist begins singing bad, everything else becomes bad somehow... At least, that's what I think...

[GRACE]

Originally Posted by Mai82Go

I don't get all the hate either. I really enjoyed the concert. I think some people should just relax and move on to other singers or at least away from Ayu. What's the point of staying when you cannot even enjoy a concert anymore because you hate the costumes/her stage-presence/the vocals/Shuya/whatever? Ayu obviously never pleases, no matter what she does. I really don't see what you guys were expecting from CDL? That it would be flawless and perfect? Then you obviously didn't follow her performances over the last years. Or would you prefer a lipsynched concert?

woah, calm down. No one hated it, but that doesn't mean we have to love every detail. Get off your high horse and take your holier-than-thou attitude outside, cause it is not welcome here.

[Mai82Go]

^I'm sorry if what I wrote sounded offensive to you. I just felt that I needed to defend Ayu. It's probably because I like her so much, it hurts me when people hate on something I enjoy and say that they didn't even like it in the slightest. It makes me question myself and my standards. Maybe I don't see the flaws, like you guys do. I just enjoy and don't think to much about it. Now I feel bad. I apologize once again if my post sounded arrogant to you.

[amorphose]

Wow... I'm surprised to see so many people think the vocals are bad. I thought the vocals were many times better than AT09 and PCDL. o__o I'd say these are her best since AT08. The vocals being really quiet at points was extremely annoying, but that'll be fixed on the DVD for sure. It was probably a technical difficulty with the live recording.

The overuse of the dancers, I agree with-- and hopefully in the future it does stop. Especially the last year it's been way, way out of hand. Even in some TV performances. And I do admit that the recycling/reuse of choreography and props is irritating too, but ugh... Not much to say about that except that I hope it changes too.

I'd love to see Ayu do something totally different for AT10, even if it's just her and the band the whole time. It'd be amazing if she did something like P!NK's Funhouse tour. I saw that on TV yesterday and kept thinking, "Wow, if Ayu would do something like that instead of just changing her outfit and relying on her dancers for everything!"

I did really enjoy the concert though, so I'm not gonna complain anymore.

[GRACE]

Originally Posted by Mai82Go

^I'm sorry if what I wrote sounded offensive to you. I just felt that I needed to defend Ayu. It's probably because I like her so much, it hurts me when people hate on something I enjoy and say that they didn't even like it in the slightest. It makes me question myself and my standards. Maybe I don't see the flaws, like you guys do. I just enjoy and don't think to much about it. Now I feel bad. I apologize once again if my post sounded arrogant to you.

I loved this concert, it was actually one of my favorites, but I still notice everything she did wrong, and have to point it out.

[Kanariya.]

I really enjoyed teddy bear. That was nice.
The other songs were also okay. Not that great but still okay for me. :3
I like the outfits for this concert, even the pink one. It was cute. XD

[Mai82Go]

Originally Posted by amorphose

I'd love to see Ayu do something totally different for AT10, even if it's just her and the band the whole time. It'd be amazing if she did something like P!NK's Funhouse tour. I saw that on TV yesterday and kept thinking, "Wow, if Ayu would do something like that instead of just changing her outfit and relying on her dancers for everything!"

I sometimes think Ayu uses soooo many dancers because she wants that they feel needed or something. Ayumi Hamasaki is a company and Ayu is the CEO who loves all her staff. If she wouldn't use them, they would be unemployed. So she uses them, so that they are satisfied. Ayu's really become a package deal, you cannot get her alone, it's always the entourage with her. Probably one of the reasons why the teddy bear Performance gets so much praise. Only Ayu, nothing else. Actually I hated the MC part and miss the times when it was just her and Yo-chan talking. Those dancers are not even funny....*sigh*

[KPL]

I also love the "only ayu" but her team are too important to her. Maybe that is her personality....

[SURREAL__RAINBOW]

omg Because of you was embarrassing to hear...

[JinHamasaki]

Originally Posted by SunshineSlayer

^ No. Even I still find the concert enjoyable. And I have watched every performance she has ever done and what to expect is something that could be way better than this. Her vocals are seriously becoming a major problem and its only going to keep getting worse unless she actually takes the initiative to really change something. Yet instead, she's already announced that she will perform more concerts next year than she ever has.

I'm kinda in the same boat as Sunshine being an older ayufan. Her vocals were okay in the beginning and then it started to go down. Was it unbearable? Not really. I think unbearable was CDL 02-03....yeouch! (she was sick though).

I think ayu needs a NEW team. She needs to pull together a completely new team to help produce her music and take her to the next level. It might be a little difficult being a Japanese artist, but I would love to see her work with some North American and European producers to see what they come up with. And ayu being the way she is, she will still leave that Ayu trademark in her songs (and sing Japanese). She could also use that help in her live concerts to keep her material fresh, because I've seen enough of dress rips, ribbon dances, ring dances, and so on.

But let me not put my full judgement, because CDLs are supposed to be less flashy, and the TV rips are always terrible: the mics don't pick anything out! Unfortunately, it is difficult to discern between avex magic and having the actual audio track of the concert.

[emi♡]

Can I just ask people one thing?

I think it's really ridiculous to call everyone who is saying her vocals are bad "haters", or other things. Can we refrain from that?

Her vocals WERE bad, if you can't hear it, you're probably tone deaf, which is not meant to be an insult, since there are a lot of people who actually can't tell the difference, say, between a note that's flat and one that isn't. She made a lot of mistakes, more than I've ever seen from her and it was...honestly really bad. She wouldn't have passed those performances on American Idol.


Anyway, this is like my favorite concert ever, and I think I've made the shift to where I'm going to start loving the CDLs more than the Arena Tours. I certainly like this one more than AT09. But I agree with GRACE, we can still point out everything, that's what the discussion is for.

Anyway, I think this DVD is going to be fantastic <3

@Jin: I agree. I think she's been in her comfort zone for a long time, and I think it's time for a change. New composers, new producers, maybe some western ones. I don't think they'll change her sound too much...but maybe she just feels things go a lot faster with her Japanese team, which, of course it would, they've been working together for years lol