DNA is overall described as an power album, consisting of Kuu's core sound, staying independently from those ever-changing times (meaning trends, I guess).
She says the album even consists to 200% of the person she currently is.
She tried to focus on the music and its details and declined most of other activities not being connected to music for it.
She acknowledges, that AND included songs, that are probably difficult for fans, who like J-Pop, but she wanted those to go to the concerts, cause that might have changed their perception of them. DNA now has more of her "core" sounds, which consists of different genres, Western and others.
When the interviewer says, that it's easy to listen to, she's happy about that, cause she recorded in between AND Tour dates and even though she knew already how to put the album together in general from the demo stage, the image changed when she was done recording and she knew how to put the setlist for the tour together at the same time. It was quite hard.
She's producing lives for more than 10 years now and in the last 8 years she also produced her music for performing live. She imagines stuff like choreos and costumes and so on while doing so, but as she also knows from her tour questionnaires that "catchy" songs like the ones from the "old" Kuu and easy-to-sing-songs (at karaoke) are popular with her fans as well, she also included songs from her husband and the writer of "you" (people, who already did popular songs among her fanbase).
So in that sense AND is for her fans and DNA more catchy and for everybody.

HUSH
Contains the lyric part "つま先から頭まで遊び、仕事、、get burned", meaning it's bad if you do something halfheartedly. Kuu personally thinks, that life should be fun nevertheless and if she's missing that e.g. in work, she's going to get burned out.
She usually doesn't put single songs as the album openers, but she felt it would be fitting here. She didn't put HUSH on AND, cause she thinks due to its tension it doesn't fit live house venues and is more fitting for a hall tour. And it has a catchy hook.

Dangerous
She wanted to update live songs like POP DIVA and UNIVERSE, cause time has passed since they were released, so she composed Dangerous with her husband. She says she feels like she rather rearranged what her husband presented her with that than producing herself from scratch, but things like the melody are done by her. In detail she says she took the song from her husband and said to him "I want that part to change", went to the studio, erased parts and composed new melodies being in front of the microphone and kept those her husband agreed to. :laugh

WATCH OUT ~DNA~
WATCH OUT was originally for another artist, but Kuu wanted it for herself .
The world now is overflowing with information and she's wondering how you go through the world distinguishing between the good and bad things (for yourself) without being mislead.
She wrote the song in the perspective of a strong woman, who's finding her "own groove" to pull through.
The interviewer then asks about what she personally thinks about all the social media and the current society of excessive information.
Kuu anwers she's not looking at social media (except her own), but it's alright if people who want to do. With her own accounts like on Insta and LINE she says it's always a borderline situation, but she tries to show the real person she is.

ScREaM
The interviewer says he feels like ScREaM is also a song for social media and Kuu agrees (in the sense of bullies and slanders). There's the expression of "high risk - high return" , cause there's always the possibility of a negative response, but it's better to pull through with it and not to dodge away, to understand it as a chance. (in general the song is about - the Japanese - society and fighting against obstacles in it every day)

CHANCES ALL
There's always a song on every album with a strong message Kuu wants her fans to receive. This time it's CHANCES ALL.
It bascially sumps up her own feelings from the songs before - that everybody should have the same chances in life and take their chances, face their obstacles like women, who are constantly judged by appearance, sometimes even just because they are women, just like Kuu is for example as a 派手なアーティスト, a "flashy" artist.
She wants to encourage here and give love and understanding.

会えなくなるくらいなら
A ballad about the tricky feeling of an unrequited love.
Here she's considering she's in her 7th year of marriage, asking herself if she should sing about love (sexual love). She says she noticed she still is very much in love with her husband, but she can remember how it was before, how she fell in love with him, so she decided to do it.

HAIRCUT
It was the first song done and the producer, who did the Dance In The Rain PV - YKBX - already imagined the PV for the song at the time she recorded it. She says cause the song has a western influence, it was easier to convey the metaphor of separation to her fans with her actually cutting her hair with scissors. The interviewer mentions that for him HAIRCUT also is like the rebound of the heart-broken individual from 会えなくなるくらいなら and Kuu is answering laughing, that it also has the meaning of restart, so you can see it like that. She says she likes the tension of rising again after dropping down in the flow of the album.

Guess Who Is Back
It's a new sound for Kuu and she says she always liked artists like Limp Bizkit, Evanescence and Pink and for this song she tried to do a similar sound like Evanescence as Black Clover asked for a rock song. While being aware of the dance (sound) within her, this is a song with a "high tone" she never did in the past and she wants it to be a call-and-response song with her fans.

HOT HOT
It was a popular song from the start and represents her core pretty well. The recording went smoothly. The interviewer says he find it to be the most fitting to the sexy and amusing Kuu and Kuu answers her fans were saying the same and she was surprised by that strong reaction.

心からi love u
This was the most popular song at the pre-release viewing and Kuu says that's probably because this is the typical grand Kuu ballad, but it does sound fresh within the album.
She has many songs with English titles, so she mixed it here to make it stand out.

Work That
The cute song of the album. It was competing with WHO and HUSH to be the 61st single, but as it has a summer feeling and the relase date wasn't in summer, she pushed it back to DNA.
It's a song about men, who act all good on the outside with strangers, but exactly the other way round in private.

Pin Drop
A song about the silence, where you can even hear a pin falling down. It's a live performance song, where she wants to break that pin drop (silence), finally entertaining everyone. She intially wanted to open the album with this song, but she wanted to end the album with a song, that when repeating the album would give a feeling of starting again.
Another meaning is that of "destination" - getting back to the place(s), where "the pin drop was done", breaking that silence.


It's an album full of different songs and songs to be enjoyed live.
And album to mark her ground in the changing times.

TRICK was released in January 2009, about a year after the incident.
If you look at it as a whole, you'd just say it's an album about delivering a show and it's her trick to gain all the attention, just like she's singing in the intro of the album and like the main promotion song show girl suggests.
Like she wants to deviate from what happened the year before, just doing her job, going on with her life.

I took it like that at first as well and in a sense it also is like that, though it always did strike me a bit odd, that she did a magic show as release event, where things are an illusion of how they really are. Or how the visuals are done with one part her being a clown and the other herself, being dressed for a show/circus/vaudeville show, where trick doesn't fit.
Now after Gubsi mentioning to me, how you can feel her struggle in the album, it suddenly struck me.
If you take a closer look at the lyrics and how the songs are placed, you can take it as a statement about the scandal and her feelings in it.

After the intro it goes on with TABOO, where she's inviting you "to things you've never seen before", showing things and sides that are taboo and can only be showed at night - or as part of a show on stage, cause it's not real.
She's even asking, it it's a mistake or an illusion and which side you like in the song. It's about discovering.
It goes on with show girl, a song about Kuu being the show girl.
You wouldn't expect it, but the lyrics are quite deep.
The important point is, that she's singing about being a "rumoured show girl" with all those "rumoured methods" she uses to capture the audience.
When she's putting on a show, she's the show girl, the confident woman, but there's a "secret behind her veil" and "If you extend your hands, it'll feel like you can reach it, but you can't", cause it's just an illusion.
And an ever on-going struggle.
The show girl is just an illusion, cause that's not all she is.
If you meet Kuu outside of her show, she's standing before you as a normal person, not as the show girl. And the public, the audience thinks they know, who she is, but in reality, they don't know, that's why she is the "rumoured show girl".
In the next songs she's singing about "abusings of the pasts" (Your Love) and the first time in the album about things she regrets having done (stay with me).
Then there comes This is not a love song, a song about that she "can't heal yet", "no matter how much she sings". It is a song about the love to a man, but the words she uses are strikingly fitting for her situation at that time. And compared to the songs before and after very aggressive in tone. Driving next is about heading to an unknown destination, just starting to move and she's asking the passenger (us!) to just go with her.
Sitting here in the middle of the album at that point gives it a really pleading character, quite strong! She wants to go on, but she doesn't know where it's going to lead or where to go, just that she's not sitting alone in her career car.
Then there are the two collabos lumped together. I don't really see a correlation in the lyrics - they're collabos and I guess she is grateful for the support (That Ain't Cool was a birthday present from Fergie after all), so she put them on the album and just put them together in the middle.
But that does mean you can directly go from Driving to Hurry Up!.
A song about being betrayed by someone you don't know well, but had a good time together. She's directly singing "her efforts came to nothing" and being impatient about how to go on.
Moon Crying after that was the first single, the first release, after the scandal. A heart-wrenching ballad as a main song for a summer sinlge! And it's another song about remorse, about regretting doing something. On first glance it's a song about love, but you can interpret the you she's talking to as the audience. Or maybe even her old self? And it's another song where she's directly singing about, well, singing. It's very present in the whole album.
JTWYA now being about her best friends, she accepts as they are and who are always on her side. She even had her real female friends in the PV for it. So her real friends, who supported her all through that bad time after the scandal, are the topic of the song. At this point it could also mean she's accepting that side of her, who made that reckless remark, too. Like she concludes the song with "I should just walk as myself" and before mentioning "Yeah, today I'll turn forward".
And only now, after all that up and down of feelings through the whole album, we have her first very typical happy and uplifting "be yourself" Kuu pop song!
One line gets back to the show girl theme again:
"Bluffing, yeah, isn't a bad thing
Everyone gets stronger that way".
It's her stage she can be confident on, the illusion she was able to take on for that hard time, forgetting that there was the scandal present around her every time she stepped down the stage.
But also the illusion that she just can be who she is in public.
The album finishes with a good feeling, with her words of love.
"I'll sing the words of love"... "to a tomorrow overflowing with joy".
So she's ending with hope that it will change again.

I seriously had my problems with the album. I still have honestly, it feels pretty disconnected and scattered to me, but that's because it is. All those different feelings scrammed together without a proper direction (she could have lumped together all ballads and all aggressive rockier songs e.g.).
She pretty much always did that with her albums, which is why I didn't thought too much about it first. But when Gubis mentioned, how conflicted he felt she still was in the album, just then I was able to see it. I mean I expected it with the first singles, but not a year after with the full album.
Like she starts with in show girl: "Up & down emotion, they won't stop".
For the night you attend the show.
For the time you listen to the album.
For Kuu at that time.

The visuals fit to that. Kuu is depicted one person doing the whole circus/the show. I mean, she is a solo artist and you can take it just as a symbol for that, but they could have easily shown some audience or other artists in the album shoot. Or real animals.
They didn't. She is all alone.
The clown costume is just a cover. The make up has a tear on one side for symbolizing both sides of life like usual for a clown and most probably also that sadness was part of her daily life back then.
So there's the illusion, the trick, capturing the attention, but not giving everyhing and also not receiving everything there is.
Cause it never is the whole reality and it is an illusion to think it is.