To be completely honest...I don't think Ayu's music is that westernized sounding...especially when I compare it to the stuff we get here in America. I mean, yeah...pop is western...but her music just doesn't sound like the modern music of the west. Some stuff, such as (don't) Leave me alone, kind of sounds like mid-late 90's American music...but that's like ten years outdated lol. I don't know, to be honest, I just think Ayu is exhausting the Japanese public. While it's fun for us, it's probably annoying how she's always releasing new material. It might've been fun at first, but it I'm sure it's just starting to get old now after twelve years of constant releases (not to mention it's probably just starting to sound all rushed and not carefully composed). As someone said, 'what goes up must come down'....maybe her fame is slowly fading away???
I will say this much though, in a lot of ways (even though she doesn't sell nearly as well as she had in yester-years) Ayu is still very successful. She always hits the top (#2 is still basically the top) and she still sells over 100k. That's not too bad in comparison to a lot of other j-artists I've followed
.