Ami Suzuki

[babbito2k]

Ami Suzuki is possibly more interesting in terms of her career than her music.

Her first single came out in 1998 (when she was 16) and was a top ten hit. Her first album came out in spring of 1999 and hit #1. She had a #1 single (Be Together) in the summer of 1999. She even starred in a dorama (Fukaku Mogure) in 2000.

But in 2001 she sued her management company, claiming fraud. Wishing to break her contract, she set up her own management with her parents.

What happened next has been characterized as "blackballing." Other than a few articles discussing her legal situation, Ami Suzuki basically vanished.

Sony, her label, hastily released a compilation album in the spring of 2001 but since then has released nothing and has let her catalog go out of print.

Last year she finally managed to break her recording contract with Sony. In April she released a single packaged with a mini photo album (under a book publishing label) and just this week released a CD single.

[phoenixfire92983]

Interesting background info...but what exactly is the topic? Is this about her latest single or just if people like her in general?

[babbito2k]

The topic is Ami Suzuki. There aren't any other threads here about her. People who haven't been listening to jpop for very long may not have heard of her. Others may have wondered what happened to her.

I am not a big champion of her music, so I don't care if this becomes a me-too thread for Amigo fans - and for people who are big on that sort of thing, I think the mere mention of the name would be enough to set them off.

A couple of other points of interest regarding her career:

Ami won first place in a talent-search TV show in February 1998. She was then signed to a management contract with a company headed by Tetsuya Komuro, Svengali of Japanese dance-pop (Komuro is a story unto himself).

Suzuki and Komuro's management company later fell into dispute as noted in the previous post. Apparently the management company was found liable in court for non-payment of income taxes out of Suzuki's earnings. Komuro also produced Suzuki's Sony recordings.