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1. I Am...
Perfection. The album she was born to make, I don't know how to describe it, everything about it is right. It also has three of my all time favourite Japanese songs; M, Evolution and A Song Is Born.
2. Secret
This is another album where I feel like everything fell into place in just the right way and ended up being amazing, especially for such a rushed project.
3. Duty
What on the surface first seemed to me like Ayu's most forgettable album holds inside some incredibly well crafted songs. In some ways this album feels a little like a dry run for I Am..., even though sonically they're not that similar, the feelings of the songs, the genuine compositions and the perfect arrangements, in retrospect, seem to point to I Am... being the next step.
4. LOVEppears
This seems more like a single collection than an album to me, almost all the songs seem like (and were) mega hits, although it's let down by a few duds and the fact that, like I said, it seems like a single collection, there's nothing that really holds all the songs together.
5. (Miss) Understood
Later in her career she's gotten a lot of criticism about too many of her songs sounding the same, but you can't say that about most of (Miss) Understood. I know some of Geo's tracks turned some fans off but I thought generally the album ended up exactly how it had to be for something fresh. Enough variety to be completely fresh but the tracks still sound cohesive with each other. Just has a couple of stinkers that drag it right down for me.
6. Memorial Address
Hard to grade this one because of it being significantly smaller than her other albums, most of the songs are technically perfect but a bit too conventional after I Am... and Rainbow.
7. Rainbow
This could have been even better for me than I Am..., but it ended up wrong. Almost every song starts with amazing, captivating ambient instrumental clips and then when the actual melodies start I snap right out of it. Some of those songs were just utterly bland, although it did have a few true gems. I just wish more of the album could be like Everlasting Dream, Neverending Dream, Hanabi and the first 45 seconds of Everywhere Nowhere.
8. Guilty
Little to say about Guilty, it's not horrible, just unremarkable. It doesn't have as many bad tracks as Rainbow, for example, but it doesn't really have anything that captures me, plus I hear a few songs that seem like a second version of a previous song.
9. My Story
If this was a mini album like Memorial Address it could have been up there with Secret, it's got a few brilliant songs, but the whole album goes to hell after Wonderland and never really recovers properly until Humming 7/4, and by then it's too late. Plus, like Guilty, some of the songs seem too similar to earlier ones from Memorial Address.
10. A Song For XX
Combine the blandness of Guilty with the downright crappy filler from My Story and you've got A Song For XX. I can count the truly worthwhile tracks on one hand with fingers to spare.
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