As much as i LOVED the album when it came out, today my feelings are different.
It was the era where i was totally obsessed with ayu, well i still love her to death now but i'd listen to her like 500 times a week according to my last.fm account and i was 15 years old, experiencing my first love bla bla bla.
I remember wanting everything to be perfect so i didn't even listen to HBYA and Party Queen when she sang them at CDL, i wanted to keep the total surprise for when the album would come out, even when it leaked i wanted to wait till i got my physicial copy, which was 2 weeks after the release date btw, a lot of wait
, i'd come home everyday super excited asking my mom whether the album arrived or not
When i got it, i put it in my old CD player whose sound was horrible, but i didn't care at that time (now i got a brand new stereo system that i'll use when i get A ONE) and it was a wonderful moment, i read what people would say about the songs on AHS you know, but what i was hearing would exceed how i tried to picture the songs, it was new, there was a lot of genres, first the "party songs", then "the fillers" (i like Letter and Call but at that time not so much), then "the angry rockish songs", then the "r'n'b song" then the "jazzy/cabaret songs" and finally the "ballad song"
I really loved the songs and the concept behind the album, i think it's the only one that really has a strong concept that you can hear and read though the lyrics and the songs themselves :
- First "Party queen", ayu is partying and wants to get drunk and have fun with her friends, fine, nothing bad.
- NaNaNa is the continuity, still having fun, but she says in the lyrics that she's the lonely queen, uh oh, maybe it's not as good as she wants to make it seem.
- Shake it! ♥ Ayu is still dancing and having fun, but in the bridge she says something like "that girl over there seems to be more appreciated than me, i know it even if you don't say it out loud", you can now guess that in fact she's partying to forget about something and that she's actually sad and doubting of herself
- Letter and call both convey the same feeling to me, she's being nostalgic yet tender, this might be the tomorrow of her crazy partying night
- And then we get "reminds me" and "Return Road", you know why she was out partying all night, that's because she just broke up with her boyfriend/husband and she's devastated about it, she can't stand being on her own because when she is she can't stop thinking about him and their relationship and how lonely/lost she is now that it's gone, it even makes her think about other bad things that happened to her in her life (see reminds me lyrics, "everyone has that one thing they wish they could forget (...)" she's not just talking about her relationship imo) this is the very "angry" part of the album
- Tell me why, she's reflecting on her past relationship and how things were, she lets us know that her significant other was really insecure and that their relationship wasn't always "good" (sorry i don't find a way to express my thoughts in english correctly), she lets us know that there has been times where she was struggling with him because she wanted to help him but he wouldn't let her in etc
- And now, the next LOVE, ayu doesn't give a fuck anymore, she's being very cynical about herself and love, you can see that she's being bitter in fact. "That thing which they call love Just where can I find it? What does it look like? How much do I need to pay? Hey, where did you buy it?" This is her saying "My love life has been a mess so now i'm just being bitter" This is pretty unusual of her to write things like that, usually she's the one praising love, but now it's like she doesn't even want to try anymore.
- Eyes, Smoke, Magic, she's losing herself even more, i don't really know how to interpret that song because she's talking with the point of view of her as a child about her parents, this song is def weird
- AND FINALLY THE AYU WE KNOW IS BACK, in How beautiful you are, you can see that she's believing in love again. (i pretty summed it up because i'm tired of writing right now haha)
Now that i think about it you can almost see the "5 stages of loss and grief" in this album, even though those stages are initially about the death of someone.
1. Denial : Party Queen, NaNaNa, Shake it! ♥
2. Anger : reminds me, Return Road
3. Bargaining : Tell me why...
4. Depression : the next LOVE. Eyes, Smoke, Magic
5. Acceptance : How beautiful you are
Ok maybe i took this a little bit too far
It would have been better if she ended this album with a song like Love Song imo, because this is really the song that shows the Ayu that lives for love and can't picture her life without it.
So i really loved this album when it came out, but today i see the flaws of the songs, they're not as good as they seemed to me before, i don't listen to this album that much now, maybe it's also because i overplayed it a little.