I discovered Ayu at the end of 2006, I was in 7th grade, 13 years old. That time was when I started with my passion/obsession with Japanese culture, anime, manga and J-Music.
Well, back to Ayu
I was an annoying fan of Inuyasha and from there I discovered Ayu (also discovered BoA, Do As Infinity and Namie) and Dearest was the 1st song I ever listened from her, and then no more words... they literary took my breath away
And then, I decided to download Ayu's latest album then, Secret. I had enough of the American mainstream music that I listened back then and I wanted to listen to something totally new to my ears. When I downloaded Secret, I was expecting that it'll be an album full with ballads (the titles like Until that day..., It was, 1 LOVE and Not yet gave me a melancholy feeling) and when I listened to Until that day..., Startin', 1 LOVE and the other non-ballad songs I was kinda weird out and something like "Woah... she did change since she did for Inuyasha... o.o" but after that I continued to listen to JEWEL, momentum, LABYRINTH and Secret and again my mind was blown away by her
Also, Beautiful Fighters and Born To Be... always made me happy and optimistic
And then, at the beggining of 2007, I decided to download Ayu's A BALLADS, my love for Ayu was rising constantly and I kept annoying my parents with Ayu (my mom is still freaked out by Ayu's "Himitsu Owowowowowow~~~!!!" from Not yet
) and then fell in love with RAINBOW, M "HAL's Progress", A Song for XX (A BALLADS version), Voyage, Dolls, HANABI, TO BE and many others *daydreams*
Forgot to mention the PVs
the 1st I ever saw was Dearest, I was amazed by it back then
also by RAINBOW (it was my favorite, it still is), JEWEL, momentum, SEASONS (without vogue and Far away) and... that's it I think, I couldn't really find her PVs, avex was always deleting them on youtube.
Oh, just remembered that I was confused that she didn't said the titles in the songs like most Western artists (except Beautiful Fighters) and didn't understand why some titles are capitalized and others with just small letters
I remember that when I downloaded Secret I thought that it was a mistake and changed the titles to "normal" titles
(like JEWEL to Jewel, momentum to Momentum etc
)
...and didn't understand the difference between A Song is born and a song is born x_x (as in what's the difference between the titles)