I always skip criminal for some reason when I have Ayu on shuffle but I like listening to it. Listening to it now, I'm thinking it has a strange placement on the album. Then again (miss)understood to me is a huge mess and I feel it could use a tracklist rearrangement but since I've been listening to it since it came out I can't imagine it any other way. Hm.

http://i.imgur.com/6jUkbu8.jpg

Ayu in Gakkou 2 in 1996. Beautiful~

Aww baby Ayu. So cute.

Love criminal. Don't listen to it too often, but it is a great song.

Love Criminal too - it's all about that electric violin!

I don't really like criminal probably because how 'heavy' it sounds, it is supposed to give that burdened kind of feeling but I don't like feeling it lmao

Getting ayupan sets from YAJ is so much cheaper than on ebay, even with all the extra costs like service fee for using the middle man and EMS shipping. Got the RnRC set for, like, $90

So, since this thread has gone a little quiet, I got another question.

Did AHS ever figure out, or maybe resolve a high speculation, to whatever the secret from the Secret album was? I wasn't on this forum back then and I never got to see the fun that happens whenever Ayu release something and everyone gathers together to figure out what it meant. I was listening to the song the other day and it got me to thinking about the album and then it got me to thinking about that interview she did and she spoke about not speaking about the secret because then it wouldn't be a secret anymore. But she always hides little things here and there for us to speculate on in the lyrics, in the music videos, in the booklet, things like that, and I can't figure it out. I'm sure it's never been fully disclosed but I would still like to know what was conjured, however.

The Secret was that some part of the Pegasus Tattoo on her shoulder was real.

Does anyone know why monochrome (at least the single version) ends suddenly and there's the sound of somoene closing a door?
Pardon me if the lyrics make it obvious, but I don't think I grasped it :P

That was it...? Seriously? I did all that pondering for that? hahahaha well, okay then. Moving on.

@Gustavopc
I think it's because of it

"la la la la la la i...
I nodded and said to myself all right
la la la la la la i...
Because I'm very strong"

It's like "Actually, I'm not strong"

@Miduhyo

I always thought the secret is "How Ayu is". The lyrics of the album speak a lot about her image as Ayumi Hamasaki+Ayu, telling to us how she feels in her life/career and showing her fears and weaknesses. And the song "Secret" is the culmination:

"If I could have a wish come true
Take me away from here, please"

Not only that but before slamming the door a guy says "yeah right" I think :P. I never understood why either.

^ Oh. I've never listened the single version, in the album it ends abrupt.

I don't know why but I can never listen to monochrome all the way to the end. It triggers such an odd feeling for me. The cynicism in the dude's voice or the abrupt end feels so visceral, lol.

Monochrome is easily one ayu's best songs for me still.

And one of the most painful for me.

The "yeah right" in the single version really makes the message more clear than it is in the album version.
Ayumi was completely dismissed.

@Miduhyo
IMO the secret is in the song Secret... She spend a whole album saying that she is strong, happy, independent, that she will keep you safe, it's probably her album where she has the most songs about her being a strong person, and in the final one (Secret) she sings about how much of her strong image is just an image... So, it's a song about how fragile she feels on a album about how strong the public thinks she is.

@Gustavopc
It's like Uknow! said, the sings about how strong she is and the "listener" or whatever the guy on the single version is supposed to be notices she is full of shit and goes alway without listening to the song till the end.

as for secret i believe it is enough to read the translation to grasp its meaning http://ayumi.primenova.com/lyrics/secret.htm

she isn't free and her days feel like they are empty even though she is seen as having everything. she does not have the courage to change things even when she is sick of the situation.("even when i am tired of flying with my only wing left i dont have the courage to rest"). she wonders how she is looked in the eyes of others (surely as if she had everything and is happy and strong) while saying that the truth is that "even now i am looking for a place to fit in". same lyrics as a song for xx. it is heartbreaking if you ask me

the secret was that she was pregnant