Ayumi featured on CDData March 2007 Issue promoting 'A BEST II'
Despite the fact that Ayumi Hamasaki is a petite 5′1″ singer, she’s a huge legend all over Asia. Apart from being a singer, Hamasaki is a fashion leader, an actress, a model, a spokeswoman, a composer and songwriter. She is the ultimate icon of fashion and music in Japan, is known as the “Empress of J-Pop” and is considered the Asian equivalent of Madonna. Consequently she is one of the most popular and influential artists ever to appear in Asia. However, till the present day, Ayumi remains an enigma and is frequently misunderstood by many.
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A.C.E. feat. Hitomi
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Artist: Hitomi Shimatani
Product Code: AVCD-30637
Release Date: 2005.01.26
Debut Ranking: #8
Label: avex trax
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Hitomi Shimatani is fairly well known for her countless tie-ins, despite of the fact that she is not popular enough to have a fixed contract with any company to endorse their products. This meant that she would not be promoted through regular commercials, as various popular artists manage to be the face of certain products for a set period. Nonetheless, Hitomi would enjoy quite a lot of variety and artistic freedom to explore different themes and genres through her tie-ins. After the hit single and successful tie-in, “ANGELUS“, another huge tie-in would be set in for her next release. For the first time, Hitomi would release a single which would be associated with the Playstation II game, “Another Century’s Episode”, better known as A.C.E.
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Promotional photo for ANGELUS
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Artist: Hitomi Shimatani
Product Code: AVCD-30598
Release Date: 2004.08.11
Debut Ranking: #8
First Press: Inuyasha Sticker
Label: avex trax
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Inuyasha is the brainchild of Rumiko Takahashi, who is a rather popular mangaka in Japan and also worldwide. This manga would eventually spawn into an anime and would receive a lot of attention. Typically anime theme songs would be assigned to less commercial artists or voice actors. However for an anime of a magnitude of Inuyasha, various popular avex artists were chosen to perform the theme songs for each season. Big names such as Ayumi Hamasaki, Namie Amuro, Do As Infinity and BoA were selected and were given extensive promotion by avex. Luckily enough Hitomi Shimatani would also be chosen to sing the sixth and the final season opening theme for Inuyasha.
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Image from [Sanctuary] booklet
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Title: Sanctuary
Artist: Kanon
Release date: 2006.12.06
Peak Position: #262
Product Code: SICL-153
Label: Sony Music Japan International
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It’s been about a year and a half since Kanon’s [Primary Flowers], the first full Sony album which failed to chart. Since this fundamental display in 2005, Kanon completed work on a mini-album and three singles, all of which contains elements that eventually made their way into her most recent album to date [Sanctuary]. The second full album was released at the end of 2006 in December when preparations were in motion for her big scene at MIDEM 2007. Did this second album attempt make up for the dismal performance shown to us through [Primary Flowers]? Well, let’s just say it depends on how you look at it.
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Vogue 2004 feat. Ayu
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Artist: Ayumi Hamasaki
Product Code: AVCD-30620/1
Release Date: 2004.07.28
Debut Ranking: #1
Label: avex trax
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Ayumi Hamasaki is the petite young woman who is a giant in the Japanese music industry. Love her or hate her, she’ll always be remembered as a legend because of the astonishing records she broke ever since she made her debut back then in 1998. Back then she was the squeaky voiced timid artist with little confidence in herself. However those days are clearly over and Hamasaki’s confidence simply radiates from her whenever she is performing on stage. For the hot summer season of 2004, Hamasaki would release her exotic 33rd single with some extra spicy attitude to match with it.
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