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Speaking as someone who actually reviews music, Zeke is completely right for reasons that are absolutely quantifiable with more than just sales numbers, even if he can't quite articulate it.
Granted, who gets feels from what songs and why, YES that is definitely subjective - but there are truly tangible, real reasons why many of Ayu's older "safe" ballads could easily be considered higher quality from a compositional standpoint than a ballad like "Zutto..."
First, of course, is the level of risk-taking involved in these respective tracks. Take "HANABI" for instance... nothing in its composition is risky - nothing in it could have been considered noisy or weird at the time. It's not experimental. it's still a 4/4 song, it's in a standard key and doesn't have any changes to those two aspects of its composition (unlike some great CREA tracks which routinely have key changes for the last chorus or two, and "Will" which has time changes). What HANABI does have is unconventional instrumentation - reverberating plucks of bass guitar take the lead alongside strings that only appear briefly before disappearing when Ayu sings in the verses; the music box sound at the beginning is not that of a relaxing, twinkling, wintery sound but that of a somewhat rusted and worn-out old family heirloom; the drums sound like they're being played in a rock arena very slowly, there's plenty of space between most of them which makes the whole song sound dark and empty. This gives Ayu space for her choruses to swell up, more layers of instrumentation - with added reverb and slightly increased volume on some of them - fill the empty space, and the emotion works much better thanks to the contrasting fullness between the verses and the choruses.
SEASONS took even FEWER instrumental or compositional risks, but it still had that gradual buildup from the verses to the choruses, it still had that contrast. It also had that very complete & dynamic mix that had reverb and amplification changes in all the right places, plus the fact that each instrument has its own solidly catchy melody so when you listen and, say, ONLY listen to the piano or ONLY listen to the lead guitar or ONLY listen to the bassline, that's a great standalone melody just on its own, AND it never sounds out of place or like it's interrupting the full song.
Zutto sounds like it was automatically generated by comparison. Each individual instrument sounds like it's sticking close to a single note all through the chorus or all through the verses, but it's otherwise sort of improvising, hovering around its target note like a drunk bumblebee. The bridge between the verses has a TINY bit of a swell but its restraint makes it sound old-fashioned and conservative rather than pleasant and inoffensive which was probably the goal. The chorus isn't big enough compared to the verses because there are the same fill-in strings in the song as a constant presence the whole way through and the volume of the strings is just amplified to a miniscule level - the flavor of the chorus doesn't change despite the key shift from the verses which is just kind of sad. Add that to the relatively constant drum track - they don't change much from one part of the song to the next. The whole song feels like a blurry beige mass rather than the colorful journey up & down green hills and flowery fields and autumn leaves that you get from ballads like "SEASONS," "Dearest," and "Days."
And for the record I think LOVE~Destiny~ is in the same camp as Zutto... so this certainly isn't nostalgia talking. I've never really liked LOVE~Destiny~, though I'm glad it happened because it helped boost Ayu's reputation as a relatable lyricist.
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