IMO, Love songs was her last complete package (maybe Party Queen as well) and since then she'd sort of been making things because she felt she had to without conceptualizing the release ahead of time or make releases for the sake of making releases. GUILTY had a strange unfortunate creation in that she seemed to be suffering from writer's block and had to force herself to create that album when she really didn't want to write and that might be kinda why that album never got a proper tour, like she felt guilty for the album's birth somehow.
From her debut to MY STORY to (miss)understood to Secret to GUILTY though, she was creating album after album of the SIGNATURE Ayumi Hamasaki sound, but then after that it seemed like she was lost.
Loved NEXT LEVEL but that is where things started to feel off and you could tell from just about every release that came after.
Thinking about it and linking it with interviews throughout the years, I get the sense that she started to get a bit of fatigue around the time of the 1st and 2nd ASIA TOUR and was pushing herself to her breaking point.
However, despite all this, I think she is coming back in full force as the Ayumi Hamasaki we knew after A ONE and sixxxxxx as much as people disagree about those albums.
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Originally Posted by Aderianu
even if she's great lyricist, maybe that's because she has too many songs
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I think she's had some amazing lyrics lately like in A ONE or sixxxxxx, so I think there's still some good stuff coming! I'd just like a bit more general stuff that is all encompassing like some of the tracks on I am... that had lyrics that were more than just "love" but they were about humanity, you know? I know Ayu has something to say about these topics but I guess she may be wary of bringing it to her music.
From Misa-chan's blog:
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With the crazy schedule of the 5-month consecutive release project, there’s not much time to spend reflecting on the 15th Anniversary too (laugh). Shall we leave that to the end, and talk about “petal” first?
“It’s a mysterious song, like “marionette”. The song and lyrics are different from ayu’s usual style, so much so that the production staff were amazed. However, the lyrics are not strange for the sake of being strange. When I heard the song, things just fell into place, and I managed to pen the lyrics almost immediately.”
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I would say that it is more SCAR-like than Marionette, but it does have that vibe.