[a❤martian]

Originally Posted by tokyoxjapanxfan

Her style was a good balance of J-POP and western influences, songs that wouldn't really be possible on western radar. Now however the J-POP-ness in her music is almost nonexistent. Mostly due to her very common usage of western produced back tracks that she buys and overlays lyrics onto. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but she certainly doesn't have the same amount of access to the "good" tracks that say, Beyoncé would. She her options, imo, are on the cheaper side. Her brand is stronger in Japan, so she'd get far better productions by using Japanese producers (in theory).

The layering of her music from the golden era of J-POP is largely gone, and I find her tracks to sound a bit hollow.

Obviously this won't be the case for everything. But I hope what I wrote makes sense.

And many of you are super fans, so it's very hard to disappoint you. Which is a great thing. But to not be able to see where other people are basing their opinions on is kind of a problem. Living in a bubble surrounded by people with the same ideals would be bad for anyone lol.

So while you may disagree (again, that's fine!) at least try to see our point of view lol.

I think you summed up how I feel about Ayumi Hamasaki. I think this is relevant to most J-Pop atm. Unless you're a super fan it's just not great music being released by most artists.