It was announced recently that Ayu went deaf completely in her left ear...
So I can give her a little bit of slack for being so shitty at kouhaku. I feel really sorry for her, though. She's going to continue on and not let a little thing such as PARTIAL FREAKIN' DEAFNESS get to her SINGING career! What a wonderful woman.

Edit: This is awesome.. even my BROTHER (who doesn't follow jpop at ALL, he doesn't like it) somehow knew about this and sent me a XBL message today: