Ayumi Hamasaki -- appears

For me, one of the most famous scenes of Ayumi Hamasaki（浜崎あゆみ）in her music videos is where she's strutting towards the camera in various types of dress. Not sure where the video was filmed, though. Perhaps it was somewhere in New York City (certainly those night shots provided some confirmation). Probably the reason for that image sticking in my mind all these years was that the song was another big hit for her.

The video was for her 11th single "appears" from November 1999, and perhaps that title was a shorthand for the famous proverb, "Everything is not as it appears". Hamasaki's lyrics hint at observations of various couples walking hand-in-hand and wondering if everything is really OK with the relationship. My take was that the protagonist was making those observations while contemplating her not-so-happy recent experiences at love. Also, those many"guises" that Ayu puts on had me wondering whether the lady had to take on a variety of different incarnations to please her boyfriends over the years.

From the urgent melody provided by Kazuhito Kikuchi（菊池一仁）, when I listened to "appears", I had assumed that the song was used for some TV suspense, but the only tie-up here was as a commercial song for a cosmetic. The song reached No. 2 on Oricon and became the 81st-ranked single for 1999. It was also a track on Hamasaki's 2nd original album "LOVEppears" which came out at the same time as "appears" and hit No. 1 for 3 weeks running. By the time the year was up, it had already become the 15th-ranked album, and then by the end of 2000, "LOVEppears" even upped its standing to No. 14. Currently, it is the No. 40 album on Oricon's list of all-time albums.