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I don't think there was inherently wrong with how Secret was "shaped" - honestly, about half the album needed polishing, but I think working with a deadline had Ayu streamlining her writing process, forcing her to be honest. She unfortunately didn't have the time to get creative and buff the edges. I think she's figured out how to do that in the albums since, culminating in "Rock'n'Roll Circus." I think she's actually tried to learn from experience from the last few albums, and each album since then has been a more complete-sounding version of the one before it in alot of ways. Whether or not that's been a good thing is up to the listener, but it's certainly an entirely different approach from her first few albums.
I genuinely believe that a creative person really only has so much creative energy in them. If you have enough new ideas and momentum to remain interesting for more than about three albums, you're made of magic. Ayu at least lasted four, depending on who you ask. I do think she made it to number four before starting to settle into an "ayu sound," and while she does experiment every now & then, she just doesn't have that much in her anymore, and with every single STILL being number one, she doesn't have a whole lot of drive or reason to change her formula. Even if she did, it would probably come across as too forced. What she's doing now, doing something different only occasionally and when she's moved to do so, results in alot of her material being only decent (by Ayu standards anyway) and only a few songs being amazing. If she waited until she had an album's worth of "amazing", we'd only get an album every 5 years or so.
Again, YMMV, but I don't really mind THAT much the way things are going.
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