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Name :
Ayumi Hamasaki a.k.a. Ayu
Place & Birthdate:
Fukuoka Prefecture, 2nd October 1978
Zodiac :
Libra
Favorite Female Entertainers :
Keiko (Globe), Rie Miyazawa, Seiko Matsuda
Musical Influences :
As a child I listened to rock music (Led Zeppelin, Deep
Purple), influenced by a relative. Now I like listening to
soul music such as Babyface and En Vogue.
Favorite Actors :
Nicolas Cage, Rie Miyazawa
Favorite Movies :
The Bodyguard, Betty Blue, Leaving Las Vegas
People I Respect :
People who have things I don't have.
People I Dislike :
Liars, people who don't say hello.
Current Interest :
Collecting white things for my room
Favorite
Food :
Biscuits (maybe my staple diet!), cakes, chocolates, kimchee
(Korean marinated cabbage)
Favorite Things to Read :
Most of the fashion magazines. Modern-language translations
of the Manyo tanka poems are especially interesting. Poems
of Natsuo Giniro, Mitsuo Aida, etc.
Lessons :
Piano, Japanese calligraphy (5th rank), abacus calculation,
Japanese flower arrangement, Kumonshiki study system
About My Lyrics :
Ilike to try to view my own and my friends' experiences
objectively, and put my honest feelings into words. If I
write when I'm low, it will be a dark song, but I don't
care. I want to be honest with myself at all times.
Ayumi
Hamasaki is a Japanese pop singer. She is one of the most
prolific and influential Japanese pop singers in Japanese
music history, and is dubbed "the Empress of J-Pop".
Since her debut in 1998 with her first single "poker face",
she has sold more than 40 million records, with the releases
of her eight full-length studio albums, one mini-album, two
compilation albums, 40 singles, and several non-studio
albums, being the top selling solo and female artist and the
fourth top selling Japanese artist in the history of Japan.
With the release of her 40th single "Blue Bird", Hamasaki's
single sales have passed the 20 million mark, making her the
first solo and female singer to do so.
With the release of her 39th single "Startin' / Born To
Be..." in 2006, Hamasaki became the first female singer to
have 27 #1 singles (the most #1 singles a Japanese female
artist has ever achieved) and 38 singles in the Top 10 of
the Japanese Oricon charts. She has 15 consecutive #1
singles to date (starting from "Free & Easy"). Hamasaki is
also the first Japanese artist to have her first original
eight studio albums top the charts.
Ayumi has also won the Grand Prix at the Japan Record
Taishou (the Japanese equivalent of the Grammys) three times
in a row, from 2001–2003. She refused to be nominated in
2004 due to the Avex-Matsuura incident. Ayumi Hamasaki no
longer accepts awards given at the Japan Record Taishou and
those similar to the awards.
Early
life
Although Ayumi lived with her mother, she was primarily
raised by her grandmother. She has vague recollections of
her father as he left the family at around the time she was
five, and she has not seen him since. She grew up in a very
liberal household where she was expected to do what was
right for her without her mother intervening in her affairs,
since her mother was always out working to support the
family.
In her youth, Hamasaki started her modeling career as a
model for a local bank. During high school, she was
considered a delinquent because her dyed hair and short
skirts were considered extremely unconventional in Japan at
that time. She did not enjoy her time at school much and did
not get along well with the teachers. Surprisingly, she
found studying chemistry a very easy thing to do, but she
eventually dropped it because she found that it doesn't seem
necessary to make a living.
Occasionally, Hamasaki would go from home Fukuoka to Tokyo
for short periods of time, to do various modeling jobs and
during her stays, she would make friends with people she met
at work. After graduating from junior high school, she had
her mind made up to go to a senior high school in Tokyo. She
took entrance exams to Horikishi Gakuen (art/entertainers
school) together with her friends, and she was the only one
to fail — much to the surprise of herself and the school.
Show business in Tokyo
When taking the entrance exams again, Ayumi ventured from
her former talent agency SOS (targeted mostly at young
models) to Sun Music, because the chief of SOS felt she
would not do well because of her short height and would do
much better in other activities, such as appearing on
television.
Hamasaki reportedly used the pseudonym Kurumi Hamazaki once
during her works, as she acted in low budget dramas like
Miseinen and b-movies like Sumomo mo momo; however, she did
not find success.
Hamasaki recalls the times of her activities in show
business as a terrible period. She felt she simply couldn't
quit her agency as she lived in the agency dormitory at the
time, and she needed her jobs to make a living. She
remembers the confusion she felt when acting in dramas with
people she had seen on television back in Fukuoka. Also, she
was unable to understand many of the girls in the business,
who acted flamboyantly towards photographers during
photoshoot works and were often selfish, which gave her the
impression that they were very silly. This resulted in her
having a lot more boys as friends rather than girls.
In order to release pressure and forget about her confusion,
Ayumi would spend her free time wandering the streets of
Tokyo, shopping, and dancing at clubs in the Shibuya
district with her friends.
She finally decided to leave show business after finding out
about certain aspects that did not feel right to her. For
example, many photos from some of her photo shoots were not
used afterwards, and while working on television
productions, not all of the footage would end up in the
final product.
Hamasaki decided to drop out of high school at fifteen,
something she vaguely remembers by sending a fax message
with the words "I quit." written on paper. The reason for
quitting was because she did not want to see the people and
teachers anymore, feeling conspicuous among them, as her
appearance and looks were different to others' in the
entertainment school.
Around the time when Hamasaki dropped out of both high
school and the talent agency, where her contract was soon to
expire, her mother was coming to Tokyo to start a new job.
Ayumi went on to live with her together in the apartment her
mother rented. As peaceful days entered her life again, she
would once more go back to spending long hours having fun
with friends in fashionable places in Tokyo's entertainment
districts.
As an artist
The first steps Ayumi gave on music was in the rap scene. On
December 1, 1995, Hamasaki's first album along side with
Dohzi-T, DJ Bass Nothing from Nothing was released. There's
poor information about this era in Ayu's life but it is
known that there was virtually no promotion for the album.
After failing to chart in Oricon, the project was most
probably dropped by the company Nippon Columbia.
Hamasaki met her future producer, Masato Matsuura in a disco
club called Velfarre, which was owned by the Avex company.
As she had not known him nor seen him in person, when he was
introduced to her as the executive director of Avex,
Hamasaki mistakenly greeted a person sitting next to him, as
she had heard he was much younger than he was. She later met
Matsuura again, at a lowbrow karaoke bar, and while she was
singing random songs, he picked one song for her to sing
(which was by Tetsuya Komuro). Afterwards, he asked Hamasaki
if she wanted to pursue a singing career. Not feeling
confident in singing, she stated firmly that she didn't want
to.
After a while, Hamasaki lost contact with Matsuura. She had
given him her phone number before, so he left few messages
on her answering machine, but as she quickly forgot his
name, she didn't do anything about it. One day, when she was
walking through the center street of Shibuya, she received a
phone call from Avex. She was put through to Matsuura and as
they talked, she initially expressed new interest in
singing, because she didn't have any other activities, but
as Matsuura mentioned vocal training and singing classes,
she resigned again. A week later, she changed her mind once
more and went to Avex offices herself.
Hamasaki was contracted to take vocal training in Tokyo but
she stopped attending as she found it too rigid. She kept
skipping the classes but didn't tell Matsuura about it. When
he started calling her, she would switch off the phone,
knowing that she'd be asked about the classes. When he
finally found out, for a more relaxed atmosphere Matsuura
sent Hamasaki to New York, an event she would later say was
exactly what she needed. Impressed by the writing style in
her letters to him, Matsuura suggested that she try her hand
at writing her own lyrics for her songs.
Credit :
Wikipedia |