(miss)understood

The very first ayu album I heard and its still the most special to me. :luv2

Yea, probably "(miss)understood", followed by "Secret". They took place in what I call my personal Ayu Heydays, a time when I was completely consumed by her music. "is this LOVE?" was my absolute favourite during that time. I can't tell how much I was in love with that song and music video back then :O

I think my most nostalgic memory is crying watching the performance of RAINBOW at CDL 2007-2008. It's not my favorite concert of hers but it was my first since I had just discovered Ayu. I felt like I was never happy back when I was living with my parents, and listening to that song made me 'release' a lot of the pain I was holding inside my chest. Even today I can see myself, alone in my old room, listening to RAINBOW.

Something similar happened when I was having a really, really tough time a coupe of years ago. I had returned to my country after living abroad for two years and I was pretty miserable (academic and economically speaking). In the middle of all that my iPod played ever free on shuffle and that was my first time listening to it. I can remember very clearly how relieved I felt listening to the lyrics and to that really touching instrumental.

Those are still two of my favorite songs of all time.

This sounds a bit odd, given I became a fan in 2008, but for me it's Duty. GUILTY had just been released and I did like it a lot, but I had also downloaded Duty and RAINBOW, and I REALLY got into Duty. I had just moved to a new school and was going through a hard time with my parents and Duty really marked this year, especially the title track and Far away. Gosh, I remember I bought it through eBay, the first album from ayu I bought, and keeping it on the package to open it at school with my (then) best friend, who is also a JPop fan :laugh

This is actually really similar to me, as well. :D Duty had a lot of tracks I got really into early on, especially the singles from it on the A Complete. :D

momentum was my very first Ayu song but it was Guilty album that made me fall for her. As teenager I couldn't understand how something as brilliant as talkin' 2 myself could even be composed. The album has so many heavy-sounding tracks that I loved. Now I like Ayu old albums more but I can't help but feel nostalgic about Guilty.

My first Ayu album as well. My first song was Moments, but the first release I got to be a part of was Secret. It was a difficult time in my life, mere months after I was hospitalized for attempted suicide.

JEWEL still remains the most important song I think Ayu has ever written. I still wish it had been released as her 41st single. I think it would have been paired well with momentum as an early Winter single. I sometimes forget there wasn't a JEWEL/momentum or momentum/JEWEL single.

Secret was the kind of music I always heard in my head but couldn't seem to find in a music store. So, it served to fill a hole I desired to have filled.

I'm sorry to hear what you've went through in the past but in dark depressing times , music can be a great saviour

When I 1st saw/heard JEWEL , I was blown away and initially I thought all music videos made were only for singles so it was surprising that JEWEL & momentum sadly weren't released as an actual official Ayu single

I guess after so many studio and mini albums that were released after Secret , Secret still stood out to me as at that time , I felt everything went hand in hand together , from the songs to the video to the covers

And it was the very 1st Japanese album I purchased at the local CD shop too . Man I missed that feeling of going to CD shops locally and just buy Japanese releases rather easily unlike now ._.

MY STORY for me as well, and I'm so touched to see a lot of people say the same.

I first got into JPop technically with Utada's English debut Exodus in 2004, when I was 13. I saw online that a singer named "Ayumi Hamasaki" was compared to her so naturally I checked out her music.

The first album I ever got by her was MY STORY because it had legitimately just come out (I got Exodus around Christmas 2004 and MY STORY had been released a few weeks earlier) and it absolutely blew me away. It was nothing I had ever heard done in pop music. I still listen to it today and it still warms my heart when I recall my youth in that way.

A Summer Best

Happening Here and You & Me are her essentials

i have to say NEXT LEVEL. i found ayu in 2008 and NEXT LEVEL was the first original album released when i started to listen to her music. i remember being addicted to it soo long and loved every song on it

GUILTY and Duty.

GUILTY, because I experienced for the first time a new album release. Also, I listenend to this album a lot when a lot of things happened in my life. The song that brings up so much memories for me is Together When... There is a reason why I don't want
to listen a lot to this song.

Duty, is the ultimate nostalic Ayu sound for me. I did not like Duty as an overall album in the first place, but I enjoyed the vogue-Far away-SEASONS trilogy, SURREAL, Key and SCAR. The other songs grew quickly on me when I listened through this album. Duty was kinda a confirmation for me that I enjoyed Ayumi's music for sure. It made me a fan.

It's a toss-up between I am..., RAINBOW, and (miss)understood. I'll go with I am... for this post.

The lyrics and darker sound permeating the album are something I've been able to relate to at several points in my life, it's like the quintessential album which I keep coming back to 'cause no other album is as perfectly "real," so to speak. I listened to it so much in middle school, now it's years later post-university and I've picked it up to start listening to again. It holds countless memories spanning so many years of my life!

The songs themselves are unique and when I was little, I remember listening to it and thinking no one else was quite like Ayu, I'd stumbled across someone truly special. I still believe that ^^ Her screech towards the beginning of the I am... track, which opens the album at that, still leaves me speechless for a moment. There's something really bold about it, and raw.

I can remember looking through the lyric book on my bed as a kid and analyzing the photos and set and being awestruck simply by the way the sun rises and sets throughout the book, haha.

Ah, good memories, bittersweet nostalgia.

RAINBOW is my nostalgic album, because it came out a few months after I became a fan and was my first album release. I have very fond memories of that album, though I love some of her other albums more. Still can't believe that was over a decade ago. I still have the poster for it though it's not on my wall.

The other album that has a special place for me is GUILTY. In 2008 my dad told us he had cancer, but he only told us when it was bad and he needed hospice care (my parents were separated and he didn't live near us so he was able to hide it), and three weeks later he was gone. It was a really bad time in my life as I suffered some other big losses in the 18 months after that and listening to GUILTY helped me to deal with the anger and pain I had. I have trouble understanding and expressing how I feel, and some of the songs in this album perfectly described what I was going through so it helped me to deal and express what I was feeling, even if I was just by myself, as I was most of the time. Anytime I feel that kind of pain returning or even if it's a new one, GUILTY is the album I go back to. The emotion is so raw in it and allows me to release those feelings, even though my experiences have been different from Ayu's.