Hamasaki Ayumi

Hamasaki Ayumi (浜崎あゆみ) is a Japanese pop singer-songwriter under the avex trax label. She made her major debut in 1998 with the single "poker face". Her debut album, "A Song for XX", reached #1 on the Oricon charts and sold over one million copies. Since then Ayumi has released countless number one singles and albums. Ayumi is also the all-time 4th best-selling artist ^[1] in Japan and the highest selling solo female artist ^[2] in Japan. She is the only solo artist to have sold 20 million singles in Japan. Ayumi has sold over 45,528,000 copies in Japan ^[3] alone. She currently has 30 #1 singles (31 including "a song is born" with KEIKO), 18 of which are consecutive and 12 consecutive #1 albums. She was the 39th biggest taxpayer in Japan for 2002 and 37th for 2003. She once accounted for 42.6% of her label's income and 16% of Japan's total record sales[4]. She's currently number one at the highest earnings list for female celebreties in Japan for 2007. ^[5]

Ayumi grew up in the Fukuoka Prefecture and had a hard life from a young age. Her father walked out on her and her mother when she was three and she hasn't seen him since. Throughout most of her life she grew up in a single-parent household, but she was mainly raised by her grandmother because her mother was at working trying to support them. It was rare for her mother to pick her up from school and Ayumi grew up under a liberal discipline system. Her mother let Ayumi decide what was wrong and right and because of this, she matured faster and preferred to be by herself. However, Ayumi would find herself closely tied with her grandmother. During Ayumi's childhood, she listened to rock music (Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple), which was introduced to her through a relative.

Ayumi's sole interest slowly started to turn to fashion. She started modeling for a local bank at the age of nine; and when she was fourteen she moved to Tokyo because she didn't understand her mother's life style. There, she signed with the talent agency SOS and made an attempt at becoming a professional model, but failed due to her height. When Ayumi would go from Fukuoka to Tokyo for modeling jobs, she'd make friends with people she'd met at work.

After graduating from her Junior High School, she decided to moved to Tokyo and went to school there. She took the Horikishi Gakuen school of arts entrance exams with a group of friends and was the only one to fail. Ayumi studied up and took the exams again. She passed, but soon she would get bored of it and quit.

After that she became a delinquent; dying her hair, wearing skirts, skipping, and fighting with teachers. She soon became tired of school and eventually found it not necessary to survive She dropped out when she was fifteen. She then made several attempts at acting in various b-movies and dramas under the name Kurumi Hamazaki. Through acting she would meet another newcomer, Nagase Tomoya, and the two would later start dating in 2001.

In 1995, at the age of eighteen, Ayumi sang cover songs on a Idol on Stage television program. She debuted in the music industry with her single and album, both titled "Nothing From Nothing". The two releases had more of a rap/hip-hop styled sound than any of her latter releases. Both releases were failures with the single ranking in at #200 and the album ranking in at #198 on the Oricon charts. Shortly afterwards, she left Nippon Columbia.

[edit] avex Debut - Loveappears

In 1996, Ayumi attended the avex trax owned Velfarre dance club. While dancing, a friend encouraged her to sing karaoke. Her performance sparked an interest with famed avex trax producer Masato "Max" Matsuura. Max gave her his card, which Ayumi forgot about and lost. He later called her and offered her a record deal, but Ayumi declined.

In 1997, Ayumi was contacted by him again, and even with feeling insecure about her talents, she accepted the deal. She started singing lessons, but found them to be too strict and stopped going. In the summer, Max shipped her off to New York, where she was forced to attend lessons that she eventually enjoyed. "Going to New York promised me nothing in terms of becoming professional. I just had to believe in myself," Ayumi later stated. While in New York, Ayumi also wrote many lyrics and when she came back to Tokyo, Max was impressed with her writing talent and advised her to keep writing her lyrics. The lyrical style was pop this time around, and Ayumi put a lot of emotion into it, much like with what she'd write in her diary when she was young.

On April 8th Ayumi released her debut single, "poker face". The single did much better than her previous attempt and reached #20 (her "Nothing from Nothing" single reached #200). Later on that day, Ayumi's grandmother was hospitalized, and eventually died that night.

Ayumi's following single, "YOU", was a ballad that also reached #20, but ended up selling more than "poker face". Ayumi started releasing a new single every two months, with each of them gaining more success. The singles "Trust" and "For My Dear..." both entered the top ten at #9. Ayumi soon teamed up with her friend and associate, Max Matsuura, and the Depend on you single entered the charts at #6.

"A Song for XX" was officially released on January 1st 1999 (the album was sold in stores starting mid-December) and managed to reached #1 on the Oricon charts. The album ended up staying on the charts for over a hundred weeks, selling a total of 1,451,910 copies. The album even received the Japan Gold Disc Award for Album of the Year, earned her the Best New Pop Artist award, and a spot preforming at NHK Kouhaku Utagassen.

Ayumi's seventh single soon became her first number one hit single. The single, "LOVE ~Destiny~", was released in April of 1999 and also became her first single to chart on a the United World Charts, which helped it become recognized world-wide. The b-side, "LOVE ~since 1999~", was a duet with Sharam Q vocalist and leader of Hello! Project, Tsunku. He later released a single entitled, "Love ~Dakiatte~", with his own solo recording.

Later that year Ayumi scored many new contracts with different import companies; such as Honda, Aube, Kose, and TU-KA, which helped and pushed her popularity. This showed with Ayumi's ninth and tenth singles. "Boys & Girls" became her second single to reach number one in the Oricon charts; not only for one week, but for three full weeks. Also with this single, the CD's were in 12 cm, instead of 8 cm discs. The single started a trend, including several remixes in her singles to keep up with the arising competition, namely Suzuki Ami. The single also marked a new point in her career, for it sold over one million copies. Only a month later, Ayumi released her tenth single, "A". The single ended up being her biggest single. Much like "Boys & Girls", the single reached the number one position for a total of three weeks and sold a total of 1,630,540 copies.

On November 11th of the same year, Ayumi released her second album, "LOVEppears", and her eleventh single "appears". For the releases photo shoot Ayumi was shot naked with her hair covering her breasts, which caused controversy. Despite the controversy, the album still managed to reache number one in Japan and sold over 2,562,130 copies.

[edit] Duty - A BEST Incident

After the release of her second album, Ayumi released two album-cut singles, "kanariya" and "Fly high". The first single, "kanariya", didn't sell very much, but set a new record. The single reached #1 on the Oricon charts and became the only album-cut single to reach the top position. The second of the two, "Fly high", was only limited to 300,000 copies, and ended up selling most of them.

In April of 2000, Ayumi started releasing new material for her next album. "vogue", Ayumi's fourteenth single, was the first of the new material. The next couple singles didn't fair as well as the last batch of singles, and only managed to reach #3 on the Oricon charts. Her next release, "SEASONS", reached #1 on the Oricon charts, selling over a million copies. The single CD jacket was the end of the trilogy of the photograph, which was seen in her previous two singles "vogue" and "Far away"

On September 27th, Ayumi released her third album, "Duty", and 17th single, 'SURREAL". During the jacket photo shoot, Ayumi was dressed up in a full body leopard printed cat costume. Both the single and album managed to reach #1. The album ended-up charting for twenty-seven weeks and selling a total of 2,904,420 copies. The album remains to be Ayumi's best selling studio album. Only a couple months later, Ayumi released "AUDIENCE" as a limited edition album-cut single, limited to only 300,000 copies.

Only a month had passed and Ayumi was already releasing new material for her next album. The singles "M" and "evolution" were soon released. Both singles reached #1 on the Oricon charts, but "M" came out on top selling 1,319,070 copies and being at the #1 position for two weeks. The music for "M" is Ayumi's first to be credited to CREA, which is Ayumi's composer pen name.

In March of 2001, Ayumi was pushed into releasing her next single, "NEVER EVER", earlier than scheduled by avex trax. She was very angry with the urging of the company for her to release the single. Then, after weeks of deliberation, avex trax decided it was time to release a best of compilation. They sent a message to Ayumi, to which she replied that it was too early to release the album. It is generally thought that avex trax wanted to create competition by releasing the soon to be best-of on the same day as Utada Hikaru's "Distance", which was her long-waited sophomore effort.

This is where the supposed "rivalry" began between the two divas. Nevertheless, Ayumi had to release it. Avex spent tons of money on promoting "A BEST"; and that month Ayumi alone appeared on 40 magazine covers, where she was granted with such titles as a "fashion leader". The photo shoot for the album included thousands of pictures of her crying in the streets. When the album was released, it failed to grab the #1 spot for the first week. This caused "Distance" to have the highest first-week sales in the chart's history, selling 3.02 million copies. "A BEST" sold over 2,800,000 copies in it's first week, but rose to #1 the next week. The album has sold a total of 4,235,887 copies, making it Ayumi's best selling album, the #6 best selling album in Japan of all times and the #2 album of the year.

Ayumi had many regrets at this point and the only thing she wanted was to leave avex trax, but she had a long list of concerts to perform. In May of 2001, she won the "Best Japanese Pop/Rock Artist" award at the World Music Awards. Later on, during practice for her Dome Tour 2001, she disappeared from the stage. She had fainted due to stress and then she noticed a noise in her left ear that she couldn't hear anything over. She went to a doctor, but they couldn't do anything because of her schedule. They advised her not to continue performing until it was healed, but she went on and did the concerts anyways.

Even this far into her career, Ayumi was filled with indecision and low self-esteem. Her feelings then started to change when she realized that people (many teenagers) looked up to her. This then caused the birth of Ayupan, a doll designed by Ayumi and rumored that their named like that because she thinks they look similar to a panda.

2000 ended up being Ayumi's most active year. During the course of the year, she released 52 discs altogether (1 best album, 6 singles, 8 re-issued singles, 2 DVD singles, 4 remix albums, 9 remix singles, 2 DVD concerts, and 20 vinyls).

[edit] I am... - AYUREADY?

Always one to jump back up after turmoil, Ayumi soon started releasing again. Her singles, "Endless sorrow" and "UNITE!", both reached #1 on the Oricon charts. The music video for her 24th single, "Dearest", showed Ayumi being attacked by the photographers, then running away from them and ending up happy someplace far away. The single ended up reaching #1 on the Oricon charts for two weeks in a row.

In December, Ayumi joined Komuro Tetsuya's charity drive Song Nation, which he formed to raise funds for the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in the USA. Ayumi jumped at the chance to help because she was deeply bothered by the attack, having a love for New York. Under Song Nation, Ayumi was able to collaborate with one of her idols Keiko (of globe). The single, "a song is born", was the only one of the Song Nation released not to be written by Komuro Tetsuya.

On January 1st 2002, Ayumi released her fourth original album "I am...". The album sales in Japan were decreasing while her overseas fanbase and sales started to increase. It debuted at #1 on the Singapore charts, becoming the first Japanese artist to reach #1. It also became the #7 album of the year in Singapore. The same year she was invited to and attended the MTV Asia Awards 2002 in Singapore, where she won the "Most Influential Artist Award" and performed the song "M". This marked her first performance outside of Japan. The single "Daybreak", that was released in March, was limited to 300,000 copies and only reached #2.

Only a month after the re-cut single, Ayumi released her 26th single, "Free & Easy". The single started a new shift in Ayumi's singles, moving away from the multiple remix tracks. The single almost didn't reach #1. Kuraki Mai's "Feel fine!" single topped the daily charts. However, "Free & Easy" claimed the top spot only on the weekly chart. Since this single, all of Ayumi's singles have reached #1 on the Oricon chart. Her next single, "H", sold 1,016,000 copies and stayed on the Oricon chart at #1 for three weeks.

At the end of 2002, Ayumi released a new album, titled RAINBOW. For promotion, the song with the same name was featured in many TV-CMs that promoted the album inside and outside of Japan. Rainbow was listed as track 00, but it isn't actually on the album. It reached #1 on the Oricon chart.

In 2002, Ayumi was contracted by Fuji Telecasting Co. and on December, 2nd 2002, TV talk started the program "AYU READY?", a show hosted by Ayumi. The ending song for the show was "+ (more than)". In the show, Ayumi talked with musical guests and performed songs live with them (much like SMAPxSMAP). In the summer season of the show, Ayumi filmed it from the "RAINBOW HOUSE", a spa created by Ayumi that is located on a beach near her birthplace. The show was transmitted every Saturday and consisted of 74 episodes that featured more than 60 artists. The program ended on March 20th 2004.

[edit] A BALLADS - Memorial Address

In March of 2003, Ayumi released her second best of album. This time the album was ballad themed, containing one new track ("Sotsugyou Shashin"), and the rest were handpicked by Ayumi. She wanted the cover of the album to represent her healing mental scars and there was no one around to help her but herself (the same concept was applied in the "RAINBOW" music video). The album ended up selling over 924,902 copies (only 1/5 of "A BEST's sales) and reached #1 on the Oricon charts.

In April, Drizzly Records, a German label that had previously released Ayumi's vinyls with remixes, decided to release her first single in Germany under the name of AYU, titled "Connected".

Later that year in July, Ayumi released her 29th single, "&", and she followed up in August with "forgiveness". In order to celebrate her 30th single, she began a new tour called A Museum. It included her favorite songs from her singles since "poker face".

In November, Ayumi released her 31st single, "No way to say", which was the lead-in single to Ayumi's first major mini-album, titled "Memorial address". The album's title is a reference to her relationship with her father, who had left home when she was a kid. The album was Ayumi's first release that came in both CD Only and CD+DVD version. It charted at #1 in Japan and #3 on the United World Chart.

[edit] MY STORY events - Secret

Ayumi's first release of 2004 came in march with the single, "Moments", which stayed at #1 for two weeks. She soon followed up with the singles "INSPIRE" and "CAROLS". After "INSPIRE" won at the 2004 MTV Music Video Awards, Ayumi announced that she would not be accepting any more awards in order to give opportunities to other artists and allow them to grow musically. She did this because she had won the same award a number of times.

Two months after the release of her 34th single, titled "CAROLS", Ayumi released her seventh studio album, titled "MY STORY". It reached #1 on the Oricon charts and charted for 43 weeks, while it reached #3 at the United World Charts and charted for 3 weeks. In total, it ended up selling 1,132,444 copies and has become Ayumi's last release to sell over a million copies.

Ayumi would soon pick up activities in April of 2005 with the release of her 35th single, "STEP you / is this LOVE?", which reached #1 in Japan and on the United World Charts. In July, Ayumi went to Hawaii to film the fairyland music video. The video ended up costing over $2,000,000 (¥240,000,000). It became Japan's most expensive music video and World's 8th most expensive music video. In August, she released the "fairyland" single.

At the end of October, Ayumi finished recording songs for her new album. She went to New York to record the music videos for her "Bold & Delicious / Pride" single; and did a photo shoot for the new album, and one for ViVi magazine. Both songs on this single used samples from Sweetbox (as well as several of Ayumi's upcoming album tracks). On the first day of the new year Ayumi released her 8th album, "(miss)understood", which reached #1 on the Oricon charts and on the United World Charts.

In March, she released "Startin' / Born To Be...". The single contained a cover of the TRF song "teens". In June, she followed up with the single "BLUE BIRD". The single has become her best online-selling single, with over 730,000 legal downloads.

In August, Ayumi flew to Hawaii again to record new songs for her next release and do photo shoots for her new 2007 Calender. November of 2006 brought the release of her ninth studio album, "Secret". At first the release was announced as a mini album with seven tracks only, but then it was announced on Ayumi's website that she will be doing overtime in her studio to transform it into a 14 track full album. The album charted well reaching #1 in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. However, it only charted at #2 on the United World Charts because of the high sales of the new Beatles album. The album is her best selling album outside of Japan.

Days after "Secret's" release, Ayumi attended a special interview for CNN International, where she showed her improved English skills and mentioned a possible tour. She then stated that she was interested in reaching everywhere her fans are. In December, she attended the premiere of the movie Confession of Pain in Hong Kong because she participated in the japanese release of the soundtrack (the song "Secret" was used. Denise Ho covered the song for the movie's Hong Kong release.) Ayumi had to leave in the middle of the movie because many fans attended the premiere to see her, which caused chaos in the audience.

[edit] Asia Tour - A BEST 2

Ayumi started 2007 with an announcement of her third best-of album, "A BEST 2", and confirmation of the Asian tour. The tour was called ASIA TOUR 2007 A ~Tour of Secret~. The tour started in March in Taiwan, then went to Hong Kong and China in April, and ended in Japan in May. She wanted to perform in Singapore, but due to problems with the labels of that country she could not. Most of the shows included past and recent works from Ayumi's discography, but the Japanese shows included mostly "Secret" tracks.

When Ayumi arrived in Taiwan, fans were waiting for her. They held posters and CDs in the airport; and she held the fans hands and received a rose. The same scenario repeated at the Hong Kong and China airports. The concerts consisted mainly of 20 songs. During the tour, Ayumi sang the closing song "Who...", but this time in Chinese and Japanese. It was the first time that Ayumi sang a song in Chinese. During the MC in the concert she talked in Chinese, English and Japanese. It is known that many well-known artists from the music industry, such as Jolin Tsai and Cyndi Wang, attended the concerts.

In Taiwan and Hong Kong, Ayumi visited fashion stores and in Hong Kong she spent HK$500,000. While she stayed in Taiwan, a special edition of Ayupan was released, Ayupan x Hello Kitty, because of Ayumi's love of Hello Kitty. There, 10,000 tickets for the concert sold out in two hours and the tickets in China sold out in six hours. During the last quarter of the concert, Taiwanese fans sang "SEASONS" and Chinese fans sang "Voyage" for Ayumi. After overseas performances a contest was published on the avex site that said the best questions for Ayumi would be asked during the MC.

The best-of album was titled "A BEST 2" and released in two versions, "A BEST 2 -BLACK-" and "A BEST 2 -WHITE-". The Black Version included rock orientated, painful, and dark songs plus one new song titled "part of Me" (the music video represented Japan in the MTV Buzz Asia 2007). The White Version of the album included more upbeat, happy, and light songs plus the live recording of "BEST of COUNTDOWN LIVE 2006-2007" concert.

The albums topped the pre-orders charts the first week they were announced and avex trax created a special site promoting the albums. All songs in both albums were remastered. The "A BEST 2 -BLACK-" version was Ayumi's first album to not chart #1 since "Nothing from Nothing". It reached #2 right behind "A BEST 2-WHITE-" which reached #1.

[edit] Third Chapter

In July of 2007, Ayumi released her 41st single, "glitter / fated", marking the first time she released a single since "BLUE BIRD", in June of 2006. It topped the pre-order charts on both Neowing and CD Japan. "glitter" was used as the Zespri Gold Kiwi commercial song (just like her previous single), while "fated" was used as the theme song for the Japanese horror movie Ghost Story. Her website has marked this single as the beginning of her Third Chapter, possibly in correlation with the end of her A BEST 2 era.

At the end of May, Ayumi flew to Hong Kong in order to record her second mini-movie for her up-coming single. The movie features Ayumi's first kiss scene. The Central Avenue was closed for the filming.

In July, Ayumi opened an audition in order to get new dancers (the first in six years), their debut took place at a-nation '07 summer concert. Seven days before the release of the new single, Ayumi wrote a message for Team Ayu saying that she had broken up with her boyfriend of seven years, Nagase Tomoya. She explained that they still are in contact and are close friends.

Mid-September brought about Ayumi's 42nd single, "talkin' 2 myself". The single had lackluster sales, only selling sold 70,325 copies in it's first week (her lowest first week sales since "Depend on you"). This is most likely due to the fact that the full song had already been released on mu-mo a month beforehand. Ayumi soon followed up with her first digital single, "Together When..." on December 5, 2007.

In early November Ayumi released almost her entire videography for download only, 40 PVs charted in Recochoku's Top 100 chart and 17 didn't. The favourite was "momentum" reaching number 6, even a year after it was released.^[6]

In early December it was announced that she won the title of "biggest earning artist of 2007" ^[7] and "second national best-selling artist of 2007" with a large of 1,691,424 copies sold.^[8]

[edit] 10th Anniversary

On January 1st, 2008, Ayumi released her ninth studio album "GUILTY". The album was released in both a CD Only and CD+DVD format, with the same photobook for each editions first pressings. Though, it was released in stores a week early (on 2007.12.25) with official limited extras. The album started charting on the Oricon chart on December 26th 2007. The album would have been number one for the week, but because of the holidays it's sales will follow over to the following week. After a combined two weeks sales, the album reached #2, becoming Ayumi's first studio album on avex trax not to reach #1.

Through her blog, Ayumi announced on January 4th, 2008 that she had gone deaf in her left ear as a result of her longevity of performing.^[9]

On the 28th of January, Ayumi's official site announced the release of ASIA TOUR 2007 ~Tour of Secret~ "LIVE + DOCUMENTARY" DVD, for the 12th of March 2008. Also, they announced the release of two new remix albums - ayu-mi-x 6 -GOLD- and ayu-mi-x 6 -SILVER-, featuring remixes of all her hit songs from the albums Memorial address, MY STORY, (miss)understood, Secret, and GUILTY. They are slated for release on the 26th of March.

It was announced by French fans that Hamasaki Ayumi was in France and was shooting a video. Later it was confirmed that the new video was for a song called Mirrorcle World. This was an extended version of the intro Mirror on her album Guilty. Hamasaki also confirmed in a blog later.

Recently Hamasaki has also written in her blog that her next single is to be expected soon, and that the new song will be named "Life". It says that this song is sad, but still sends a positive message, and that she recorded this with strong emotions. The theme is to be about living and a video is expected to be shot.

It was announced on March 3rd that her new single entitled Mirrorcle World will be released on April 8th. This single will feature the new song Life, as well as 4 different editions, 2 of each will feature a "2008 Anniversary Edition" of her previously released songs Depend on you and YOU

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