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Ami

Ami Suzuki was born on the 9th February 1982 in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan and has become well known all of Japan and Asia as a pop icon. She shot to fame in 1997 when at the young age of fifteen, she was discovered through Sony Music Japan’s talent show Asayan. The show become extremely popular and Suzuki beat out over 13,500 to become the winner of the show and to receive a contract with Sony. The music producer Tetsuya Komuro took Suzuki under his wing and they began working on Suzuki’s first album through Komuro’s sub label TRUE KiSS DISC where Komuro signed on as writer as well as producer.

Ami’s first song “love the island’ which was recorded in early 1998 was selected by the Japanese government to encourage more people to visit Guam. The song became an instant success with Ami appearing on the covers of several magazines and she even travelled to Guam to promote her song on the Japanese version of MTV. The Japanese people responded massively to the travel campaign and as a result “love the island” was to debut at No. 5 on the Oricon charts. Ami proved the Japanese public that she was not a one hit wonder when her second single “alone in my room” was released which proved even more successful then “love the island” as it debuted at No. 3. After her success in the music industry, Ami had a brief stint in the world of radio just a few months shy of the release of her debut album ‘SA’ for promotional reasons. ‘SA’ was to go on to become one of the most successful albums for a debuting artist selling an astonishing 2 million copies in its 33 week run. Her other singles from ‘SA’ were ‘All night long’, ‘white key’, ‘Nothing without you’ and ‘Don’t Leave Me Behind/Silent Stream’. As a result of ‘SA’, Ami was to go on to win several awards, including the Japanese Record Award for Best New Artist. As Ami grew in popularity she was rumoured to be a bitter enemy of rival singer Ayumi Hamasaki, but both singers have clearly stated that this rivalry had never existed.

With the release of a photo book in 1999 entitled Ami-Go which was to go on to sell 200,000 copies, it was clear that Ami’s career was not about to slow down. Ami’s next single “BE TOGETHER” was to be released on the same day as Hamasaki’s new song “Boys and Girls” so naturally there was much interest to see who would beat out the other in the charts. “BE TOGETHER” won out in the end and was to go on to become one of the most popular songs of 1999. Her next single “OUR DAYS” was also a major hit in Japan and throughout Asia.

Ami in the 90s...

From 1999, Ami began to further establish herself as an artist, as she was beginning to have more control over what her songs were about and how they sounded. She made her song writing debut through her next single “Don’t need to say Goodbye” which was to feature on her next album Infinity Eighteen Volume 1. The song was met with great enthusiasm as the song was based on events in her personal life and more specifically, her high school graduation so it was easily relatable. Infinity Eighteen Volume 1 was released on the 2nd February 2000 and became an instant hit selling a massive 825,000 album initially and within a month of its release it had reached the million mark. Ami was now at the height of her career and one of the most popular singers of her time, but this was not to last. Infinity Eighteen Volume 2 which was released on the 26th April 2000 was still quite successful selling a total of 427,000 albums but Ami’s world was about to turn upside down.

Soon after the release of Infinity Eighteen Volume 2, Ami’s parents discovered that she was being severely under paid, a mere 0.4% of total royalty rates on her CD’s and they sued Ami’s production company, AG Communications and as a result, the president of the company was convicted on tax evasion charges as he was severely underreporting the company’s earnings. This whole situation was to destroy Ami’s squeaky clean image forever and she was ‘blacklisted’ by the production company. This meant that she couldn’t be hired by any other companies as she had broken an unwritten rule in the music industry, which was that you must never sue your master. This became one of the darkest moments in her career and she would never reach the heights that she had before popularity wise. She tried for two years with no prevail to get a contract again but when this failed she mostly gave up and it was to be five years before she was shown any sort of sympathy and signed on again, this time by Avex Trax.

Ami began recording for her first album on Avex Trax entitled Around the World. Her first single called Hopeful debuted was only a digital release so it is debated whether or not this should be counted as her first single. She officially returned to the music industry with the single ‘Delightful’ and this debuted at No.2 becoming quite successful as a result of a massive marketing campaign. Around the World sold 50,000 copies which was her lowest selling album so far but this was to be expected since she had been absent from the music scene for five years. Sales were to go up slightly after she toured. Around this time Ami was to start to change her style of music taking on a more pop feel. Her next album with new content was released on the 21^st March 2007 which was a year and a half after Around the World and it was entitled Connetta and it was to do terribly selling only 12,000 copies but by this time she was definitely maturing as an artist she was just suffering from bad advertisement campaigns.