Ayumi Hamasaki's 'Colours' debuts on the ORICON chart at number 5. The floppage continues.

Ayumi Hamasaki's 'Colours' debuts on the ORICON charts at number 5. The floppage continues | Random J Pop

Whilst Namie Amuro has been strutting up and down the ORICON chart, telepathically sending wigs flying into the Tokyo bay; Ayumi Hamasaki has suffered her lowest selling album to date. Her 12th studio album Colours entered the ORICON charts at number 5, selling a paltry 39,295 copies in its first week. Ayu's album was denied number 1 position from a group whose name reads out as 'Kiss my foot'. It's almost as though the planet is rotating at a speed and angle from the sun which casts complete shade over her entire life.

At this rate Ayu's album won't even be won't even get an acrylic certification for sales. Namie was asked what she thought of Ayu's recent chart performance, in the wake of her album Ballada pushing 254,944 units in its first week. This was her reaction.

Ayumi Hamasaki's 'Colours' debuts on the ORICON charts at number 5. The floppage continues | Random J Pop

Ayu's sales have been in steady decline for a while and we were silly to think this would change with Colours, which was a certified mess from the start. Her single choices were horrendous and came with equally horrendous music videos. Even by J-Pop standards with albums being old in a sense before they release due to the extensive single release period before the album drops, most of us had heard 90% of Colours long before it arrived because of half of the material being available physically at her concerts, which naturally got put online for all to download in high quality. Then there is Ayu generally not having a great deal of marketing and awareness out there to support her. This is a complete contrast to the days when Ayumi Hamasaki album releases were like national events and there was nowhere you could turn in Tokyo without seeing her face or some giant date as to when her album was releasing.

Colours should have been Ayu's big number 1 chart topping comeback album which proved everybody wrong, but everything in regards to it seems to have slid onto a slope and off into a raveen. Ayu showed some interest in moving away from her tired sound which resulted in a couple of really good tracks, but this burn with an abysmal sales performance and further decline in popularity could lead her to never tread this path again and stick with what worked in the past. On the other hand, it could force her to push things all the way after witnessing hair loss first hand as a result of Namie Amuro's big first week sales of Uncontrolled and Feel - two albums which Colours was definitely influenced by, however small this influence was. But Ayu's struggle is real.

What Ayu definitely needs to do is pull up a seat beside her infinity pool and just not release music for a couple of years. Everybody including her most die hard fans have been saying this for years. But Ayu really needs to listen to this advice and take it. Otherwise shit will just get worse for her. Unless of course she is trying to go for a new record for her first album to chart outside of the ORICON top 10 in its first week, in which case she should keep going. That would be very achievable with her next album with the way things are going.

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