i have been meaning to talk about hamasaki ayumi for a while now considering i was quite a big fanboy during my otaku phase (that took place during the first part of the the noughties). most westerners who eventually get into j-pop either through anime, japanese fascination in general or with people who like dance music through remixes.
for me it's a combination of the second one and third one and heavy emphasis on the latter. but to be really honest the cult of hamasaki ayumi eventually became bigger than japan and i honestly have no clue. i quite liked her songs even though i only understood them through translations of lyrics but unlike a few other singers (amuro naime and hikaru utada) she wasn't quite as talented.
while both hikaru and amuro did have their reign on the top i believe hamasaki's reign on the pop scene in japan was achieved by taking some pages from madonna's book. hamasaki has mentioned a few times that she is a fan and even called a song "vogue" and i believe there was a video which had some madonna influence. hamasaki became the biggest star through a relentless marketing machine and she became a mainstay on popcharts and dancefloors (with a shedloads of remixes).
while i haven't listened to a full hamasaki ayumi album in a while there are still a few songs i think that are her best. this is one them and it's from her fourth album called "i am..." and is an album i got into fast due to it's more american and european influences. which is different from her first album which is still kind of traditional j-pop.
youtube
notice that a part of my otaku phase still lingers on in how i write ayu's name with surname first.
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