More popular internationally: Namie or Kuu?

[kumis]

This is a question that I've always wondered. Ayumi is without a doubt the most popular Japanese artist outside of Asia (or at least she is out of the "4 queens") followed by Utada but I just can't decide if the 3rd place belongs to Namie or Kumi. There's no sales data or statistics that say who's more popular, so I'd like to see what you think

[Polyrhythm]

Um no, Utada is the most well known outside of Asia (for Kingdom Hearts and two shetty English albums) followed by Amuro Namie (for reasons I don't really know of). Barely anyone outside of Asia know of Kumi or Ayu.

[happiholic★]

TBH, this is not an official answer, but just an opinion. I think that Kuu is more popular, as she often performs outside of Japan at Asian music award shows, as well as the concert she held in Taiwan. She wins awards at these shows, too. I haven't seen the same for Namie, but I could be wrong. She was more popular earlier on, and she does have, as said by some members in other threads, the "rejected American demo" sound. American sounding music and image can be very popular.

[Polyrhythm]

^"Asian" award shows (AKA phony Korean award shows) still take place in Asia. Taiwan is also in Asia.

[kumis]

Originally Posted by Polyrhythm

Um no, Utada is the most well known outside of Asia (for Kingdom Hearts and two shetty English albums) followed by Amuro Namie (for reasons I don't really know of). Barely anyone outside of Asia know of Kumi or Ayu.

But they know about Utada? I don't think so. Utada might've made an effort to break the US market but she flopped miserably. I'm certain that the only people in the US that bought her albums were people who were fans prior to the albums being released and maybe a small number of people who found her through Kingdom Hearts

Originally Posted by happiholic★

TBH, this is not an official answer, but just an opinion. I think that Kuu is more popular, as she often performs outside of Japan at Asian music award shows, as well as the concert she held in Taiwan. She wins awards at these shows, too. I haven't seen the same for Namie, but I could be wrong. She was more popular earlier on, and she does have, as said by some members in other threads, the "rejected American demo" sound. American sounding music and image can be very popular.

Namie does indeed have an urban American sound in her music but I don't think that necessarily means she's more popular. Crystal Kay is more heavy on this image and sound and she's a nobody in Japan and internationally. However I didn't even think about awards and I know that Namie was nominated for World Music Awards (I know those are completely irrelevant but still) and maybe there's more that I don't know of while the only non-Japanese award Kuu received was the 2011 MAMA award for Hottest Asian Artist and that's still not truly international

[emi♡]

That "small number" is bigger than everyone who knows about Ayu, Kuu, and Namie combined. Seriously. Kingdom Hearts was huge, and I've never met anyone who didn't say automatically how much they love those songs, whenever it comes up in conversation, and it does come up.

Hikki also has a...more "interesting" sound. The people who usually flock to everything non-mainstream, or even everything non-American, find more solace in her sound, than in the "rejected American demo" sound, or Koda's pop and hip-hop sound. I mean, that's the sound they're trying to get away from lol

And since Ayu isn't really known anywhere, they find Hikki first.

Remember, Hikki also did the theme songs for Evangelion. And when she traveled around Sephora's during her tour, loads of people came to see her. No one else would get as many.


Anyway...internationally, I'll go with Namie. Maybe because of her Inuyasha song, Come. My real life friends even had a discussion about her on facebook a few weeks ago. Was so weird. I thought one of you had posted the song lol

[happiholic★]

Originally Posted by Polyrhythm

^"Asian" award shows (AKA phony Korean award shows) still take place in Asia. Taiwan is also in Asia.

I know that. I just meant that because she's more popular in Asia, outside of Japan, it seems to me that she would be more popular internationally. There are many Asians in North America. Sorry I didn't make that more clear. Also, I forgot to mention that Kuu sang the theme for FFX-2. I know a number of people got into her by searching that song. I don't think that Namie has anything like that. Except, maybe as emi said, the Inu Yasha theme. But, I think that X-2 is more popular than Inu Yasha, plus there are a number of ending themes to that *cough*terrible*cough* anime.

[SURREAL__RAINBOW]

Utada, she is more known for sure.

[Chibi-Chan]

I think both Namie and Kuu are just know within the j-pop/anime/japan fandom. People who never listened to any asian music wouldn't know them.

[NintendoHTF1242]

People who play Final Fantasy will know who Kuu is.
People who watched InuYasha will know who Namie is.

[kumis]

Okay, whether or not Utada is known more than Ayu is for another thread. I was thinking of that possibly being true when I made this thread but Namie and Kuu are in the question here

[mizuki-7]

Originally Posted by Polyrhythm

Um no, Utada is the most well known outside of Asia (for Kingdom Hearts and two shetty English albums) followed by Amuro Namie (for reasons I don't really know of). Barely anyone outside of Asia know of Kumi or Ayu.

Lol you don't represent the world ... When J-pop became very popular in the world in the early 2000, people automatically heard about Utada and Ayu !

In france it's Ayu/Utada by far after it's Kumi and the last is Namie ! Maybe Namie is front of Kumi now ?

We have here a TV channel on the cable which called "No life" about Japanese culture etc... and there a special corner about J-music and each week netizens must voted for the PV they like among the catalog that the channel owns and the PV Song 4 U reached the second position behind ONE OK ROCK (who are very popular here) 5 or 6 weeks in row or something like that before become classic ! 3 weeks ago Avex has given Pink Spider and Lovely by Koda Kumi and they don't even reached the top 50 so it tells a lot about her popularity in France ...though we don't have clips of Namie or Utada !

[Delicious n Bold]

I think namie
Most of my friends never played ffx-2 but watched inuyasha

[Lady~Deviance]

Originally Posted by emi♡

That "small number" is bigger than everyone who knows about Ayu, Kuu, and Namie combined. Seriously. Kingdom Hearts was huge, and I've never met anyone who didn't say automatically how much they love those songs, whenever it comes up in conversation, and it does come up.

Hikki also has a...more "interesting" sound. The people who usually flock to everything non-mainstream, or even everything non-American, find more solace in her sound, than in the "rejected American demo" sound, or Koda's pop and hip-hop sound. I mean, that's the sound they're trying to get away from lol

And since Ayu isn't really known anywhere, they find Hikki first.

Remember, Hikki also did the theme songs for Evangelion. And when she traveled around Sephora's during her tour, loads of people came to see her. No one else would get as many.


Anyway...internationally, I'll go with Namie. Maybe because of her Inuyasha song, Come. My real life friends even had a discussion about her on facebook a few weeks ago. Was so weird. I thought one of you had posted the song lol

Quoted for truth.

Out of the "big four" Hikki is the most well known internationally hands down. It's due to the international blockbuster hit game "Kingdom Hearts" and its sequels. Their respective theme songs "Simple and Clean" and "Passion" played a huge role.

I can't tell you the number of times (over the past 10+ years) I've been dumbfounded by the amount of people, even celebs who know nothing about Japanese music but yet know who Hikki is and maybe/never heard of the others. Non-fans and fans alike, it's mind boggling.


Back on topic: Out of Kumi and Namie however, I would say Namie due to Inuyasha. In regard to FFX-2's theme song, it was sung by Jade Valerie for the international version so Kuu didn't have true "international exposure" in that sense.

[CoriKaru]

Um you made this thread about Utada and ayumi when you pushed that agenda in your opening post as soon as you passed go and collected 2 dollars.

Utada IS more internationally known for the multitude of reasons already stated. What reason would ayumi have to be well internationlly known? "Xillia"? Pfft.

Originally Posted by Lady~Deviance

Back on topic: Out of Kumi and Namie however, I would say Namie due to Inuyasha. In regard to FFX-2's theme song, it was sung by Jade Valerie for the international version so Kuu didn't have true "international exposure" in that sense.

Thank You! I would have thought this obvious. Kumi didn't get international exposure with FFX-2. I thought her attempt at the English Version of "Emotions" was the Rejected Demo every one was talking about.

[Polyrhythm]

Originally Posted by mizuki-7

Lol you don't represent the world ... When J-pop became very popular in the world in the early 2000, people automatically heard about Utada and Ayu !

In france it's Ayu/Utada by far after it's Kumi and the last is Namie ! Maybe Namie is front of Kumi now ?

We have here a TV channel on the cable which called "No life" about Japanese culture etc... and there a special corner about J-music and each week netizens must voted for the PV they like among the catalog that the channel owns and the PV Song 4 U reached the second position behind ONE OK ROCK (who are very popular here) 5 or 6 weeks in row or something like that before become classic ! 3 weeks ago Avex has given Pink Spider and Lovely by Koda Kumi and they don't even reached the top 50 so it tells a lot about her popularity in France ...though we don't have clips of Namie or Utada !

Whoa whoa whoa...um, sorry Mademoiselle Obaasan but I left the 20th century behind 13 years ago along with the rest of the world. And ewww, what's with the drawn out, wishy-washy essay. Seriously,



Also, lol a nondescript French TV show "don't represent the world" either so yeah.

[mizuki-7]

Originally Posted by Polyrhythm

Whoa whoa whoa...um, sorry Mademoiselle Obaasan but I left the 20th century behind 13 years ago along with the rest of the world. And ewww, what's with the drawn out, wishy-washy essay. Seriously,



Also, lol a nondescript French TV show "don't represent the world" either so yeah.

[emi♡]

Well, I'll just go ahead and officially represent the whole world.


Hikki > Namie > Ayu > Koda, these days.

[Chibi-Chan]

Originally Posted by NintendoHTF1242

People who play Final Fantasy will know who Kuu is.
People who watched InuYasha will know who Namie is.

But most people don't watch the japanese version/play the japanese version. As far as I remember there are english versions of Kuu's FF songs, but in the english version of the game they just played the instrumental. And even if people bothered watching Inu Yasha with original japanese dub they most likely never heard the name Amuro Namie. Just because people heard 1 or 2 songs from them in a game or an anime doesn't mean people know their names or know of their existence.

But what exactly is the question here, who is more popular internationally among "normal" people or do people from the fandom of jpop/anime also count?

If we speak about "normal" people I would say their popularity is virtually zero (same goes for Ayu and Hikki with the small difference that only a few might have heard their names ones).
In the jpop/anime fandom it really depends which group of people you ask, I guess. People out of the jrock/visual kei fandom most likely hate all of them. But I also met a few who respect Utada because she writes her own music and some who respect Ayu because of her concerts and her lyrics. People who love just anime and don't care for jpop in generel only hear songs from anime most of the time, so they heard the names of Ayu, Hikki, Kuu and Namie, but don't really bother. But some of them are big fans of some of Ayu's classics like evolution, SURREAL, M, Boys & Girls etc. That's my experience at least.
And typical jpop fans are most likely now kpop fans and they prefer Namie and Kuu, who they like better I can't really say.
But in the end I always felt that Ayu and Hikki are the ones people (who hear japanese music) know best, even though they don't really bother for the fandom and don't know any new popular artists. A lot of people who hear japanese music know the popular acts from the beginning of 2000 and the very popular jrock artists from the 90s. So Ayu and Hikki are the ones they heard a lot back then. But most of them only know their old stuff and never heard their newer songs/albums. I think Ayu has a bigger fanbase internationally than Hikki, just because she is more active and because "old" Ayu had a very japanese sound (music and vocals) compared to Hikki back then.

That's of course just my experience, but in the end we can just talk about what we THINK who is more popular, because nobody ever researched on this topic. Songs in anime/video games/movies aren't really an indicator for their popularity, because that would assume that people bothered who sang the song.
The only thing that might be an indicator are active fan forums like ahs.

[TeamAyu2004]

I would say Ayu is more well known throughout the world just because of everything that she has done.
Next of course would be Utada... but come on people... when you say you know her its completely different then: "I know that girl who did the song for kingdom hearts"
I think the SONG is more popular then Utada is in the world.
3rd I would have to say Kumi because of the FF connection.
Last would be Namie, but a close last... I only say this from personal experience but Ive listened to jpop since 2002 and I didnt really pay any attention to her till 2008/9... and I introduced her to most of my friends.