Ami Suzuki: Difference between revisions
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==Trivia== |
==Trivia== |
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*'''Blood Type''': A |
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*'''Height''': 1. |
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*'''Stage Names''': |
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**鈴木 亜美 ([[Japan]], [[Avex Trax]]) |
**鈴木 亜美 ([[Japan]], [[Avex Trax]]) |
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Revision as of 06:46, 4 May 2006
 | This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. |
Template:Infobox musical artist 2 Ami Suzuki (鈴木 亜美 Suzuki Ami, born February 9, 1982) is a female singer and songwriter from Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
She was one of the most popular female singers around 1998 and 2000, and also the known rival of Ayumi Hamasaki; but in 2000 after some legal problems with her management company, she was dumped from her label and lost almost all her popularity, being an unnoticed singer in the Japanese entertainment business for years.
With the help of Max Matsuura, Suzuki finally "returned" to the music scene under the Avex Trax label in 2005 with her comeback single Delightful, a Trance song, that reached number 3 on the Japanese Oricon charts and became one of 2005 summer's hits. In October 2005 the singer released her first studio album on Avex entitled AROUND THE WORLD, which has sold 50,000 copies.
Biography
Early life
While she was attending high school, Ami auditioned to ASAYAN Vocal Strike Audition Final (ASAYAN・ヴォーカリストオーディションファイナル), a singing talent contest held by Sony Music Japan TV show Asayan (show that was aired on Monday evenings in Japan) looking for young girls who can sing; the grand prize winner was about to get a deal with Sony for a music career. The section on TV show Asayan became very popular and daily viewers increased, being popular enough to be aired even in other Asian countries. From 13,500 wannabes only five girls were chosen to be on the final, and finally Ami won the competition being supported by the audience with 802,157 votes. She was only 15 years old.
Sony Music signed Ami to the label, and Tetsuya Komuro sponsored her to his own sublabel on Sony, TRUE KiSS DISC, with Komuro as writer and producer on every song made for Ami.
Debut and Success
In April 1998 Ami recorded her first song and single "love the island", song written and produced by Tetsuya Komuro, who was on the top of his career at that time, working at that time with popular singers like Namie Amuro and hitomi. Sony Music and the government of Japan made a deal for use of Ami's song "Love the Island" as the main theme of the "Guam Island Campaign Summer '98", which campaigned for an increase in Japanese tourism in Guam. The song was well promoted, with Ami appearing on covers of magazines like Young Jump and even travelling to Guam to promote the song live on the local version of the international music channel MTV. The single was finally released on July 1, 1998, and debuted at number five on the Oricon charts, selling pretty well for a debut single. Ami's second single, "alone in my room" was also used for the Guam campaign, and also did pretty well, debuting number three on the charts and selling even better than the first single.
As the "Asayan" show has already ended its run, Ami debuted her first radio show in October 1998. The show was called RUN!RUN!AMI-GO! (RUN!RUN!あみ～ゴ!!), which topped the radio rankings of popularity. She also signed a deal with the Japanese product Kissmark for advertisements and promotion all around Japan and Asia. Sony also began promoting her third single, "all night long". Because the song was a dance tune, they featured it constantly at the most famous discotheque of Japan: Velfarre. The song was also a big hit. It debuted number two on the Oricon charts. Later that year, Suzuki Ami won various awards including the Japan Record Award for Best New Artist. Ami was constantly being compared with "rival" Ayumi Hamasaki. The two young female singers were often called "enemies" by the tabloids because they began their careers by the same time and had the potential to be the next "Queen of J-Pop". Both Ami and Ayumi have always denied the rivalry existed.
1999 started well for Suzuki, with the huge success of her first photobook titled Ami-Go, which sold around 200,000 copies, and later with the release of her debut album "SA" in March. "SA" was one of the Top 10 best selling albums of that year.
At the release of her highly-expected 7th single "BE TOGETHER" (which was a cover of TM Network), Ami competed with "rival" Ayumi Hamasaki for the first time for the first place in the charts (Ayumi was releasing the same day her 9th single "Boys & Girls"). Ami went to the 1st place at Oricon, leaving Ayumi behind at the 2nd place; this was the first time Ami peaked the #1 place in the charts, and "BE TOGETHER" became one of the most popular songs of 1999. The next single, titled "OUR DAYS", also peaked the first place on the charts later on that year, becoming a huge hit inside Japan Asia.
Ami was evolving into a more mature artist, and started to write her own lyrics. According to the things that were happening in her personal life at that time (she was about to graduate from high school), Ami wrote her first song with some help of Mitsuko and Tetsuya Komuro. That song became later Suzuki's 10th single "Don't need to say good bye".
Legal Problems
In 2000 the young singer's career came to an abrupt halt after her parents sued her management company, Tokyo-based AG Communication, whose president, Eiji Yamada, had been convicted on tax evasion charges, in order to terminate what they saw as an unfavourable contract. The lawsuit resulted in Ami Suzuki's blacklisting because of an unwritten rule of the entertainment business in Japan — artists who get into legal trouble are blacklisted.
2001 wasn't a good year for Ami. In March of that year her radio program RUN!RUN!AMI-GO!! was cancelled, and in April her official fan club ami spice (which had at that time at least 15,000 members) got abruptly closed. In the middle of this earthquake Sony Music released their last Ami's album, her Best Of collection entitled "FUN for FAN", already considering Ami a retired artist. Many people and fans started to show their support to Ami, and the Best Of album reached the first place at the Oricon charts, despite it hasn't a big promotion; something even more strange happened at that time also: Ami's first single, "love the island", appeared once again at the Oricon charts on April 2001, after four years of its original release, and it was one of the Top 50 best-selling singles for some days (selling approximately 1,000 more copies on that week). But the he support of Sony Music and Tetsuya Komuro to Ami wasn't there anymore; finally Ami achieved an out-of-court agreement with Sony, and her contract with the label finally ended in December 2004, but since 2001 to they never wanted to release another Ami's single or album, probably because of her now bad reputation.[1]
Going Independent
After three years and when all the disputes were finally over, Ami decided to change her stage name from 鈴木あみ (kanji/hiragana) to 鈴木亜美 (completely in kanji) and tried to make a comeback to the music industry. In April 2004 the singer released a photobook called "Tsuyoi Kizuna" with a CD Single included through Tokyo-based publisher Bungei Shunju. She made few appearances on TV shows to promote it, and it did pretty well despite the low promotion, reaching the number one place of the best-selling non-fiction books. In August of the same year, she released another release named "FOREVER LOVE" under her own independent label, Amity, The release did well despite the poor promotion and ranked #21 on Oricon's General Singles Chart and #1 in Oricon's Independent Singles Chart. In addition, a mini-concert was released. This included the songs from those two previous singles named, and it was entitled "2004 Summer Fly High -Ami Shower-".
But everything changed drastically for Ami when she performed live at the annual festival of her school, Nihon University. Max Matsuura, the president of Avex Trax (one of the largest record labels in Japan) was in the audience. (Matsuura is also famous for finding and developing artists into famous stars. One example of his work is Ayumi Hamasaki.) After watching Ami's performance, he signed her to his label Avex.
The Comeback
On January 1, 2005, Ami's official website under label Avex was officially open. An the promotion of the song that was about to be the first single, "Hopeful", started. The release date was in February, but later got cancelled for unknown reasons. Finally "Hopeful" was just known as the first Avex downloadable ring tone and tune single, because it was never released as a physical single. Despite of that later a music video for the song was made with a remixed by version by Japanese Trance DJ Overhead Champion; the original version of the song was never released on a regular CD, just on Avex airplay promos.
In March, Ami finally marked her return to the music industry with a "comeback" single physical CD single titled "Delightful", song produced by German "hands up" trance producer Axel Konrad, and excecutively produced by Max Matsuura. The trance song was massively promoted by Avex, releasing diverse kind of releases of the single (CD, CD+DVD, CD+Photobook, CD+Illustration Essay), with a different remix on each version and also a b-side, a j-pop ballad "About You...". The single debuted at #2 in Oricon's charts its first week and became one of the spring hits of the year. "Delightful" got the 97th place in the Oricon's Yearly Top 500 best singles of 2005.
Her second single under Avex, titled "Eventful", also a dance track, had moderate sales, debuting at number nine on Oricon music charts and it got the 245th place in the list of the top 500 best singles of 2005. Later in the year, "Eventful" won a gold prize for Best New Artist at the 47th Nihon Record Taishou on December 31, 2005. The gold prize is awarded to 10 of the top songs of the year. Other winners of the prize for that year include Ai Otsuka and Kumi Koda.
At the release of Ami's third single, Avex and the artist decided to make a different move, away from the dance, try a different style, and finally the ballad "Negaigoto" was chosen as the next single. But even before the release of the single Ami faced controversyonce again, this time for being compared with J-Pop rival Ayumi Hamasaki because of the similarity between the music videos of "Negaigoto" and "alterna", from Hamasaki's single "fairyland". Both videos were recorded by the same period, and because of their obvious similarities, Ami/Ayu rivalty started to appear again between fans, who were trying to find out who copied who. But although they do have clear similarities, their innner message is in fact really different. "Negaigoto" is a relate of what Ami passed through into the industry, with her raises and falls, and Ayumi's "alterna" is a covered attack to the Japanese media, with a message of anger inside. Finally at its release, "Negaigoto" hadn't much success compared to the previous Avex singles, selling only 22,000 copies and debuting at #13 on the Oricon charts.
The b-side included on the single, upbeat J-Pop song "Times", was used as the main theme of a TV commercial of N's STREET Online Shopping.
In this month also was founded her new official "Mobile" (via-cellphone) FanClub Ami Sapuri, after the split of Ami Spice in 2001, and on her official website Ami announced that her live tour for promoting her upcoming album was about to start in the following months. She also participated on the 2005 version of A-Nation, a concert were the most popular artist of Avex Trax get together and sing their hits. Ami performed her singles "Delightful" and "Negaigoto". This was also the first time that Ami shared tour and stage with known rival Ayumi Hamasaki.
In October 2005 Ami released her first studio album in five years, and her debut album on Avex Trax. The album was originally going to be called "HOPEFUL", but ended up being titled "AROUND THE WORLD". The album included all the singles that Ami released in 2005: "Hopeful", "Delightful", "Eventful", "Negaigoto" and "AROUND THE WORLD" (the single of this song was released the same day of the album), released in four diferent formats including a version with a bonus DVD with the music videos. The name of her live tour also changed from "HOPEFUL TOUR LIVE House Body Shake It!" to "AROUND THE WORLD LIVE HOUSE TOUR". Although the album sales weren't too bad, it can't be compared with Ami previous albums, selling the poorly amount of 50,000 copies, and also her lowest debut on the Oricon albums charts, at number five. However the the AROUND THE WORLD tour helped the album sales.
The following month Ami took part on the Japanese 55th Anniversary of Snoopy, called officially Snoopy Life Design Happiness is the 55th Anniversary, recording a song titled "Happiness is...", which was sold as a CD Single exclusively at the event, which took place in Tokyo.
On 2005 Christmas Eve Ami released her 5th Avex single, entitled "Little Crystal". The Maxi Single was full of a Christmas feeling including four different ballads of four different arrangers, and two different music videos were made for promoting the single, "Crystal" and "To be Free". All the singles with bonus DVD included behind the scenes footage until the release of this single; this is the first of Ami in Avex (CD+DVD) that don't include the bonus material, and probably this material will be added at the release of Ami's second studio album under her new label. "Little Crystal" had a really poor promotion by Avex label for unknown reasons, with only one live performance on Music Station (which is actually no promotion for a Japanese artist) and at its release debuted at #22 selling only 15,000 copies its first month.
Ami's 6th single under Avex, "Fantastic", was released just two months and a day after "Little Crystal", and one day before Ami's 24th birthday. "Fantastic" was the first song of Ami used as an opening theme on a anime series, the TV adaptation of the third season of Blackjack. But just like her previous single, "Fantastic" didn't got enough recognition, debuting only at #14 with low sales (only 14,000 copies its first week, and only 3 thousand more copies its second week). Ami celebrated her 24th birthday in company of her boss Max Matsuura (who calls her affectively Ami-chan, fact that obviously lets see a friendship between them) and some close friends. At the moment the single has sold more copies, and it did pretty well for its low promotion and debut, and has already outsold "Little Crystal", which is the single with the lower amount of sales.
The first remix album of Ami, entitled "AMIx WORLD", was released on March 29th 2006. It contained a remix of the song "AROUND THE WORLD", and of every single Ami released on Avex (except for "Little Crystal"), plus remixes of some non-single tracks from Ami's album "AROUND THE WORLD". The remixers who worked on the album are some of the most popular and recognized artists from Japan's dance scene these days. They include Sham-Poo, M.O.R., and Ferry Corsten, who remixed the songs "AROUND THE WORLD" and "Fantastic". However, the release is not expected to be a big success or a chart-topper. The album at the end of its first week peaked the #78 place on the Oricon charts, being Ami's album with the lowest peak on the charts. It is likely that Ami will never get back the success she once had at the beginning of her career, but there is still a long road ahead and we will surely be continuing to see Ami Suzuki for a long time in the future.
Currently, Ami has already finished recording the song and music video of her next single under Avex, entitled "Alright!"; the single will be released in May 2006.
Trivia
- Blood Type: A
- Height: 1.59 cm
- Stage Names:
- Specialty: Running (since junior high school)
- Hobby: Singing (for hours at Karaoke bars), dance, sports
- Favorite Subject: Mathematics
- Most Hated Subject: Society / History
- Favorite Food: Omerice (an omelet which contains fried rice), cakes
- Most Hated Food: Green peppers, green onions
- Favorite Things: Hats, digital cameras, computers, Internet.
- Artists She Respects: Keiko from Globe, Namie Amuro, Shizuka Kudo.
Discography
DVD
- AMIGO'S PARLOR SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE, November 1, 2000
- AMI-GO-ROUND TOUR, December 23, 2000
- Video Clips FUN for FAN, July 7, 2001
- 2004 SUMMER FLY HIGH -ami shower-, November 17, 2004
- SUZUKI AMI AROUND THE WORLD ～LIVE HOUSE TOUR 2005～, February 8, 2006
Books
- AmiGo, 1999
- Suzuki Ami Ichiba Saikyo Book Amix (鈴木あみ史上最強ムックamix), 2000
- Suzuki Ami Shashin Shuu Ami '02 Natsu (鈴木あみ写真集 亜美'02夏), 2002
- Ami Book, 2003
- Tsuyoi Kizuna (強いキズナ, Strong Ties), April 25, 2004
Awards
| Years | Awards |
|---|---|
| 1998 |
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| 1999 |
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| 2000 |
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| 2001 |
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| 2005 |
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References
External links
- Ami Suzuki Official Website
- Ami Suzuki at Avex China
- Ami Suzuki at Avex Taiwan
- Ami Suzuki Sony Official Site
- Ami Suzuki at Oricon
- Ami-Suzuki.Net Ami Suzuki Online Community
- Beautiful Fighter Ami Suzuki Forum