[taskinillusion]

Originally Posted by all.night.raver

I was really thinking hard about this issue a while ago but was too lazy to post a discussion topic about it.

I feel like, Ayu's best work for me is MY STORY (Moments, About you, my name's WOMEN, GAME) and STEP you/is this LOVE? - coincidentally, I discovered Ayu's "Depend on you" first, but it was right around the time that Moments was being released as a single. I love her work then. But, for all fans, you rarely ever feel that "feeling" again. Like, it was something completely new, something fresh. Ayu's music was/is great - but after being a fan so long, it doesn't feel "fresh" anymore. But everyone loves Ayu at different stages and it usually is for about the first year or two that they discover her. Everyone is yearning for "that feeling" again, but it's impossible to get the feeling that one would get when just discovering Ayu. Because then, everything was completely unknown - and now, we form expectations, hopes, wishes...

YES! Yes, yes, yes, a million times, YES! This is exactly the way I feel put into words. Thank you for expressing that so wonderfully.

Originally Posted by jbrat2219

I may be alone in this but I have to disagree. I don't think Ayu is that disregarding toward her fans. I'm not blind to the fact that many of her songs have a similarity to them but I think it's more her style than just recycled tracks. Each track has a different aura to it, at least to me. I get different feelings from each song.

For example: Rule and 1 LOVE I get a sense of sass with these songs. Kind of like, "you're not going to tell me what the **** to do, I know what I want and I know how to get it." A sense of confidence if you will. With Because of you, I feel a sense of angst in a way. From the arrangement of the song, to the lyrics to the PV. But from the song itself I don't find it very similar to the other ones. GAME I always felt was a pop-rock song, she even threw in very small hints of techno and voice distortion (which I remember thinking it was the first time I heard her use that when the song came out. More so than in evolution at least). With talkin' 2 myself and decision I feel a sense of aggression. Those songs are specifically harder than her typical rock tracks and she also mixed it strings to add that extra flare of determination. talkin' 2 myself particularly sounded like the world was gonna end to me .

Anyway I'm not going to get into the ballads you've mentioned because hopefully you see my point lol. The song compositions may be similar, the arrangements (of course if it's rock it's going to have guitars so...) may be similar, etc., but to me, in my honest opinion, the songs are not the same. They don't have the same aura to me. Same with her ballads. Although some songs do project the same aura (summer songs for example). But maybe that just means she's at that same place again?

I dunno, sorry for the longevity of this post lol. But I don't feel like Ayu is just recycling her songs as many seem to think. Possibly because I look at the songs based on the era in which they were written and not necessarily the individual songs themselves.

EXACTLY!!! Ayu has a style with what she does that makes it... well, Ayu! Thank you for this too. It explains what a lot of people feel.