[Uemarasan]

Well, I hope this isn't seen as a thread meant to lambast or put down Ayu but rather I wanted to be honest as someone who has been listening to her music for over 10 years. Frankly, I find a lot of Ayu's recent releases to be very mediocre in comparison to what she was capable of putting out before, in terms of musical genres she was willing to cross, the raw emotions she was willing to expose, the risks she was willing to take. It's almost inconceivable to imagine her putting out something as fearless as Evolution, with the way she spits out lyrics as though she were in frenzied prayer, her voice keening and wailing like a wild animal's, chaos surrounding her voice as though she were on the edge of the birth of all creation. The song earns its title. I'm sorry to sound like someone stuck in nostalgia, but personally nothing she has done since compares to the progression from LOVEppears to Duty to I am... And I'm not talking about the kind of music that she produced during that era, which certain people seem to think is what I'm yearning for. What I miss about Ayu is that desire to experiment, to push things, to risk failure, to lose herself in her music.

Personally, I believe that her music started to take a sharp dive in quality around the time of Secret. For me, that album was her last good one, and (Miss)understood her last great one. I believe that this was when she began to appeal mostly to her core fanbase, when she began to rely on and cycle through formulas that proved to be successful (upbeat summer singles, melancholy winter songs, rockish album tracks), when she began to contour her music solely according to what was expected of her, when she began to surround herself by a near permanent creative team for her image, music, and performances. Don't get me wrong; she's still capable of magic every now and then, a few songs here and there, but there is this nagging sense that it seems like she's simply going through the motions, lacking in passion.

I miss the urgency, that spirit of wanting to reach new ground and break through what was expected of a typical J-pop idol, that hunger to be brave and new. Back then, Ayumi Hamasaki was this amorphous entity, volatile, prone to transformations. These days, Ayumi Hamasaki seems to have hardened and fossilized into Ayumi Hamasaki, that doll-like, wide-eyed, girlish idol with that same Bancho nail art, gyaru hair style and color, who seems trapped in time, almost seeming to want to arrest time, when it moves forward without her. It's time to grow up. I want to fall in love with you again.