Flashback Friday: Ami Suzuki - Thank U 4 Every Day Every Body | That time Ami wrote her own swan song and didn’t even know it

Whilst Ami Suzuki is revered considerably for the return she made with Nakata Yasutaka, with “Free Free” and then the highly regarded and widely loved 2008 album Supreme Show, I wanted to throw back to Ami’s earlier days.

Much of Ami’s career prior to Avex, and even prior to The Emancipation of Amimi aka Supreme Show tends to be brushed under the rug. Partly because a lot of Ami’s earlier songs don’t hold up as well as her material from 2007 onward does. But largely because of the shadow that Ami’s controversial blacklisting from the industry casts over that entire period of her career. It truly is unfortunate. Because Ami had her biggest hits early in her career.

Whilst there is a lot of online love for Supreme Show, it was more of a cult hit than a commercial one. The album debuted at number 16 on the Oricon chart. It only charted for 4 weeks. And none of her singles from the Avex period of her career charted as well as her Sony releases during the 90s.

April 12th marked the anniversary of Ami Suzuki’s single “Thank U 4 Every Day Every Body”, which is why we’re gonna run it up this week for Flashback Friday. It was also Ami’s last number 1 hit single before she was blacklisted. And to this day it remains her last number 1 single. A bit of a bittersweet song despite the title and sunny disposition of the song.

Everything about “Thank U 4 Everyday Everybody” is early 2000s as fuck. So many songs which were in rotation on US radio and on MTV had this sound and music videos with this look and vibe. And it caused a trend wave in Japan, as many female artists had the same look, the same haircut and had songs which just stank of the 2000s. Watching some of Ami’s earlier shit is always trippy, because it’s almost like she morphs between Hikaru Utada and Nocchi of Perfume.

2000 was a strange year in music, because it was such a transitional year in so many regards. There was a massive sound shift. There were genre shifts. But specifically for Ami Suzuki and “Thank U 4 Every Day Every Body” producer Tetsuya Komuro, they experienced massive career and life changes. Ami effectively lost her career for several years. And Tetsuya went from being a high profile hitmaker that everybody was working with, to somebody who was left behind as many newer and up and coming producers came onto the scene and made his shit sound dated. Who woulda known that when Ami and Tetsuya created this song as an anthem of going onwards, upwards, and looking forward, that it’d inadvertently end up being their swan song for almost a decade.