[*Petit*]

I'm not going to say she's getting "better" or "worse", for such a statement would not hold any value to other people unless we found a common scale of measuring "good". However, that's not to say I enjoy every song as much as the other.

Personally I appreciate most of her album efforts, but I think in many ways I enjoyed past albums as a whole more than her newest ones. LOVEppears, Duty, I am... and even ASFXX and RAINBOW are albums with distinct themes. That is not to say they lack variety or that the album tracks have little personality, on the contrary they are overall enjoyable and varied, but the albums as a whole present to the listener a package, a journey through a certain audiovisual landscape where all tracks have something in common, a red thread if you like.

Her other albums are far less consistent with tracks of very distinct arrangements juxtapositioned for no apparant reason other than being a "sad ballad" or "energetic upbeat track" no matter under the guise of rock, pop, gospel or enka. This is to be expected of BESt compilations, but not a studio album and takes away from the overall experience.

However GUILTY, to me, as an album was quite nice to listen to because it was fairly cohesive. This made me able to enjoy songs I wouldn't have listened to otherwise because I didn't feel the need to skip tracks. The same goes for NEXT LEVEL , maybe even more so.

Furthermore NL was fresh compared to her former albums. Ever since the release RAINBOW I think that especially her album tracks have sounded very similar, except for minor escapades with SWEETBOX. NEXT LEVEL was a bold step away from her regular sound which is another thing I can appreciate and which fans have been wanting for a long time. This type of major change in sound has not occured since pre A BEST era and it's a welcome one. In that way, I think NEXT LEVEL is a suitable name for the album.

When it comes to singles I'm hardly ever disappointed. Since MY STORY they have led their own lives seemingly unaffected by any theme selected for the albums and been much more experimental and interesting compared to the album tracks. As mentioned above the cohesiveness of the albums has suffered as a result, with the biggest disappointment being (miss) understood despite its stellar single releases.

I think her single tracks are as strong as ever, you might say they have gone "better", but in fact I think it would be more precise to say they have been consistently innovative seeing them as a whole. This is one important reason why I always get back to ayu. Songs like Mirrorcle World, GREEN, STEP you, B&D, Startin' and SPARKLE (some of which are an aquired taste indeed) make me come back over and over again.

In conclusion, as long as she innovates and creates good studio albums, I'll be here to listen. She's not getting "better" maybe, but the musical package presented by the Hamasaki Ayumi Brand still merits following her career and her releases closely. She's the only artits whose albums I have no hesitation of pre-ordering despite not having heard a single track and for the time being
that is not going to change.


(Edit: responding to Delirium-Zer0: I kind of agree, however I'm not quite sure if it applies to me. I discovered ayumi (and jpop as a whole) in mid 2004 and my first album is MY STORY. My favourite album(s) would be I am... LOVEppears and RAINBOW and that hasen't really changed since 2004 allthough I get very excited when she releases a new one. I think her worst albums are ASFXX, (m) u and probably memorial address allthough the latter one is more of a compilation I'm not really sure how to compare it to the others. Everything else is in between somewhere to me. As for singles it's hard to say when my favourites were released because the format changes so much with regards to number of remixes, number of original tracks and b - sides. All in all I think H is her most acoomplished one, then A. (disclaimer I grew listening to "modern" music in the 90s so I guess I'm biased towards dance music (which I guess would be techno or HI NRG for those of you in the US) but baroque to pre WWII western classical music so ayu is the perfect choice for me in that way =P)