[article] You can't top this

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You can't top this

NAKED AMBITION
Ayumi Hamasaki's topless move bares fruit as her album snuggles up to the No.1 spot in Japan. And it has had big exposure in Singapore too

NEW Japanese pop babe Ayumi Hamasaki has gone raunchy.
The singer-songwriter has abandoned her wholesome, girl-next-door image -and her top -on the cover of her new album, Loveppears.

Released in Japan three weeks ago, it made its debut at No. 8 on the Singapore Phonogram and Video (SPVA) chart on Tuesday.

Gone is the innocent, little-girl look, where she wore frilly dresses and stared out of pictures with baleful, doe-like eyes.

She is completely nude from the waist-up in an audacious picture on the double-CD cover. Her modesty is saved only by long tresses, which fall strategically over her breasts.

She also wears a pair of jeans, her fingers hooked into the waistband. A single of a song from the album, Appears, released here this week, shows her in a similarly exposed pose, but with her face covered in silver makeup.

If all that near-nudity sounds like a gimmick for drumming up sales of the album, it appears that fans are biting.

Although the new-look Hamasaki has shocked the Japanese media, not to mention her fans who are mostly Japanese high-school girls, Loveppears has sold three million copies in Japan since its release.

It debuted at No. 1 on Oricon, Japan's equivalent of America's Billboard charts, says Singapore J-pop distributor Music Street.

The first edition of the release has an additional bonus remix CD and a CD-ROM which features complete details on Hamasaki on video and audio, as well as commercial snippets.

Her fans had pushed pre-sales orders of the album to one million a month before its release.

The 21-year-old singer became an overnight sensation earlier this year when her first album, A Song For XX, sold over 1.5 million copies and stayed at No. 1 for five consecutive weeks on the Japanese charts.

Since then, she has remained in the spotlight with hit singles such as Boys And Girls and A. The latter, which clocks in at 76 minutes, is the longest J-pop single ever released.

From The Straits Times (Singapore), 25 November 1999