I love countdown it's one of my favorites from the album, I absolutelly love the rough guitar in it! And i totally loved the perfomance on the tour.

countdown is great!! I really love how it builds and then it turns into that angry chorus! I'm going to listen to it right now :)

I love Countdown - the Silent Hill-esque intro, the break down towards the end with the guitar solo and drums....

omg!!! i want to become TA toooo çç

Why is TA membership so expensive? ;_;

And why is Party Queen such a good album? :3

I really enjoyed the album until those jazz songs :laugh

I love Party Queen. From beginning to end, I just adore it. I feel like it's the first time she really did a successor to A Song for XX, singing about her personal issues and not just focusing on her usual, generic, fan-focused "even though things might be hard now, let's look forward to the future together, holding hands, with our heads held high!" message. I feel more like she's singing to me when she's singing about herself, if that makes any sense. (The only exception to that being "Red Line.")

count down is indeed beautiful *.*

You makes me want to listen to Count down now XD This song is very emotional especially the verses. I really like it one of the best songs in this album !

I enjoy Party Queen too ! I like the experimentations she made with NaNaNa, Shake it, ESM, The next love, return road, reminds me ! Maybe people have badly judged this album due to these covers but this album is far to be bad ^^

Well, and alot of the mixing and studio work is not good. That's just the truth.

1) The processing on Timmy's bg vocals is not great about half the time you hear him, and they very nearly ruin Return Road. They didn't multi-track him enough or add enough reverb or something. In BRILLANTE he sounded epic & operatic but in Return Road he sounds synthesized and cheesy.

2) The sound effects in ESM are distracting. I understand the thought behind them - in moderation they could have added to the song in a clever way, but they were overdone and mixed too loud. They sound cartoony, and not in an effective way.

HOWEVER. If you look at the lyrics - I mean REALLY look at them - she's talking about alcoholism, post-traumatic stress, loneliness, the meaninglessness of the more outwardly fun aspects of her life. It's a great examination of the shallow versus the deep, and the fact that even though Ayu has come to terms with her past self, there is still a sharp division between the product Hamasaki Ayumi and the person Ayu, and she's not sure "Hamasaki Ayumi" isn't winning - the shallow Hamasaki Ayumi persona is getting bigger, and she's not sure where the product ends and the real person "ayu" begins. You can hear this in songs like "Letter" and "Tell me why" where it sounds like she's singing to herself.

And most of the arrangement choices on the album have a point - NaNaNa is a clear tribute to Keiko after Ayu almost lost her to that hemorrhage, for example. More honest songs have more real, non-synth instruments (call, Letter, reminds me); songs that are more sarcastic & whose lyrics deliberately hide pain have more shiny & colorful arrangements (Party Queen, Shake It <3); the songs that are saddest are more often in a minor key (reminds me, Tell me why).

And then there's the very end of the "how beautiful you are" PV, which is part of the whole thing. She seems like this angel who's guiding everyone, but at the end she's fighting against the same wind they are.

Aside from that video, most of the visual parts of the "Party Queen" product don't really work that well. The original SUPER AYU shoot being used for the booklet was a better choice thematically than the original shots - which ended up in the final SUPER AYU book - but because they weren't taken SPECIFICALLY for the album, they don't QUITE do the job. Ayu chose the photos to depict the messy, lonely, empty room after a party the night before - lamps are turned over, there's booze on the table with breakfast. She was hoping to show a self-destructive pattern in that booklet but the photos were taken with a more sexy, fun, kinda trashy attitude in mind, not a tragic one. So her facial expressions don't contribute to the real theme of the album. The PVs are the same way - we only see fun, from the outside. The tragic consequences aren't emphasized enough, if they're shown at all.

So musically, for the most part, yeah I think the album is great. I just think the visuals made it hard to understand what she was doing.

Thei little girl crying in Power of Music's Thank U. Awwww <3

Btw, where's the song that she was supposed to record with fans as part of the consecutive 5 releases bonus?

^ totally forgot about that omg

Yeah, I enjoyed immensely Party Queen, it had a much more personal approach from Ayu, and the most interesting lyrics in a while. Her take on happiness in Letter is amazing.
I think I'm divided on it musically, because one side of me wishes they did a better job with it. I mean, even a person like me that doesn't really understand anything about stuff like mixing or arrangement, can tell by comparing with other songs that the work done here isn't that great. But the other side of me enjoys this "raw" and "cheap" feeling of these unrefined songs which can blend so well with the concept they tried to convey. Even the booklet shoots are perfect imo: she looks so glamorous, even when it's evident she's selfdestructing. The alcohol, the messy background, they all look "pretty", this is such a strong and good image for describing the diva world.

This is illuminating It's what I've always perceived but couldn't quite process into actual, meaningful thoughts. To me, after having listened to the whole album (and I mean ALL SONGS) in order, one should play party queen again. That first track which looks so shiny and happy at the beginning is perceveid in a TOTALLY different way after having gone with ayu through the exploration of what she feels. Only like this it's possible to understand how truly sad that song is. I felt the chills down my spine. I can see now why she's a lonely queen. I can see it better after return road, letter, call, reminds me.
I KNOW RIGHT. <3 too cute

...I was wondering this as well the other day. IT GOT AAAAXED probably lol
I perfectly agree. The rawness of letter for example conveys imo feelings which suit better the song than any other refined orchestra sound. Though I doubt this was a desired effect, it turned out very well for me.

The lyric on "Party queen" that made me 100% aware of her point was:

まるで魔法みたい　目の前がバラ色
このままここでゴールドの泡に見惚れたい

It's like magic... everything in front of my eyes is rosy
But as it is, I wanna be mesmerized by these gold bubbles here.

maru de mahou mitai me no mae ga BARA iro
kono mama koko de GOLD no awa ni mitoretai

The whole song is a great counterpoint to the note she made next to POWDER SNOW in the A Song for XX booklet.

"Negativity = bad thing?
The one who affirms is me.
The one who negates is also me."

"ネガティヴ＝悪いこと？　
肯定するのは私。
否定するのも私。"

The whole point of that song was facing the negative, and not ignoring it, because the negative is part of reality and must be acknowledged, which is a good thing. This attitude is what made her interesting to the Japanese music-buying public all those years ago.

She addressed the fact that she was starting to ignore the negative parts of reality in later songs like "Naturally," but with "Party queen" she's starting to realize how destructive it's become to get drunk & forget her troubles - because now she's so focused on the alcohol, she's even blocking out the "fun enjoyable things" that she demands enter her sight in the chorus of the song. Later she even says she knows she'll regret the partying in the morning, but she blocks the thought out.

The shiny, sparkly, laughing tone that you actually hear becomes VERY haunting when you know the truth behind it. It's absolutely brilliant.

Then you hear the rest of the album, and in particular I'm thinking of "reminds me" - a song all about not blocking out past trauma and tragedy, no matter how much you want to & no matter how much it pains you to think about it. It's positive to acknowledge the negative because that's reality and it's part of what makes you who you are. And in "reminds me" we're seeing ayu face that truth directly.

I think "Letter" is actually one of the songs that did it right, actually. Some of the songs on the album did "raw" very well by actually committing to sounding unrefined & rough. Others sounded like they were TRYING to sound both polished and raw at the same time, and the result was something sort of homogenous and muddled, you know? It made it seem amateurish in places.

I used to hate Party Queen due to the bad mixing. But I've given it another chance and it's not the worst thing I've heard. Just had to let it sink in, pretty much. reminds me is powerful. Thanks to the posters posting in regards to the lyrics. Provides a better insight to the album.

Yeah... the mixing is SUCH a problem. The lyrics should never be a good album's ONLY major strength, or the message gets lost. And that's pretty much what happened. =\

What if the fan(s) who won this didn't show up? :O

I'm about to! I'm just waiting for my paycheck so I can pay! lol i hope someone points out the pros and cons of beinh a TA member.