Ayu goes all P!nk 'n' shit for her latest tour, A Cirque de Minuit

Ayumi Hamasaki - A Cirque de Minuit | Random J Pop

When Ayu rolls out, she rolls out with the kitchen sink and half the house still attached to it. This woman does not know the art of pacing. Fresh off of the back of her cover of Hikaru Utada's "Movin' on without you" came a triple A-side single, another classical release that nobody wanted and also a tour.

Ayu's new tour is titled A Cirque de Minuit ~Mayonaka no circus~, and as the name implies, the theme of the tour will be of the same Cirque du soleil shit that P!nk's done for her past 2 major tours and Kumi touched on for her Trick tour.






Ayu's tours always feature high production values and she's always done a great job of featuring the very latest of her material into her set-lists. She continues this trend with the inclusion of her acclaimed cover of Hikaru Utada's "Movin' on without you".

  1. Duty
  2. Microphone
  3. Game
  4. My name's women
  5. 1Love
  6. Zutto…
  7. Last minute
  8. Walk
  9. Forgiveness
  10. Progress
  11. Surreal ~evolution~ Surreal
  12. Now & 4eva
  13. Movin' on without you
  14. XOXO
  15. Lelio
  16. Boys & Girls
  17. How beautiful you are
  18. Born to be….

This setlist is solid. It would have been nice to have seen a song or two from Next level and Five, but that's just me being particular based on songs of hers I like.


Zutto...


Last minute


Movin' on without you

"Zutto..." and "Last minute" sound more or less the same to me. If the videos weren't labelled with the song names, I wouldn't have been able to tell you which one was which. I only identify "Last minute" as the one where Ayu whipped her weave during the performance.

When I saw "Movin' on without you" was part of the setlist, I actually clapped for this woman. She did a good job with her cover of the song. A great job in fact. Her cover was so good, that she should have gone off and shot a music video for it. But for her to include it as part of her setlist shows that she knows has a good thing going on. That said, her performance of "Movin' on without you" was as dry as a tatami mat. She came out in her tour merch T-shirt. She did not dance. Her dancers barely even danced. Her live vocals REALLY made me appreciate the work RedOne's team put in to make her sound good. That DJ. Why was he even? Ayu should have just mimed the entire thing, put on a sexy little outfit, strutted around the stage and worked a little bit of waist every now and then whilst her dancer throw themselves across trapezes and the screens show a set of equalizers or some shit. This performance was so basic for a production which had the scale to deliver something better for a song which deserved more.

If you search around online you can find her countdown set in full. It's worth a watch. Ayu always puts on good shows. Avex skimp on budgets for her music videos, but they do not fuck around with her tours.

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