[ExodusUK]

Some more stuff about it...

Don't you think the course of love described in these phrases is very clear?
　Secondly, around the release of the maxi-single "A" (in August 1999), she felt she was at a deadlock and was going to quit. She herself told that the song "too late" put into "A" had been the confession of such feelings and the good-bye message to her fans ("GIRL POP" Dec. 1999). Many people were surprised to know that and supposed what had driven her into a corner in fact. The four principal suppositions I saw on internet are as follows.
　① The demand for making positive songs
　② The enlargement of the image of "Hamasaki Ayumi"
　③ The distance between her and her fans
　④ The aversion for the situation that she had to make lyrics one after another
　I think any of them is weak as the cause of a deadlock. As to ①, it's certain that she had been troubled with the problem when creating her first album, but she must have already found her answer by that time, as I had written before. On the other hand, it wasn't before the release of the second album that she was clearly conscious of the problem of ②. (It became one of the main themes of her third album "Duty".) And as to ③, it's quite doubtful whether she perceived it before holding a standard concert. (So she was going to quit without experiencing it !) ④ sounds true to some extent, but it's not imaginable that she would give up singing only by the reason. Don't you think we can persuade ourselves at length by adding one more reason to it, the personal affair of her losing love?
　Moreover, please look at the album title "LOVEppears". Don't you think it's very pretty pony~pretty pony~pretty pony~pretty pony~pretty pony~? According to the public explanation, it means the things like love. But, to express this meaning only, it's enough to name as "Love in Appearance", or, more simply, "Looks like Love". Why did she make such a coined word? -- I suppose she had wanted to cross out "A", in other words, one more meaning of "A was lost" was hidden behind the title.

　　　　　　　　2. Supposing the Situation (continued)
　Mostly because of the reasons above, I think it very much likely that she experienced losing love then. Still I can't assert it's 100 percent true. So I would like to go on under the supposition that it was a fact.
　Supposing it was a fact -- she must have been in quite severe circumstances at the very beginning of 1999. I'm not going to search who was her lover, but, considering that her lyrics of those days are quite serious, it's supposed she loved earnestly and was hurt so much. On the other hand, she had made all her efforts to create the first album, putting as many as fifteen lyrics into it unsparingly, there would have been almost no stock. What to do then? The three choices would have crossed her mind.
　① Take a rest telling that it has become impossible to write a lyrics
　② Write a fiction
　③ Write her thoughts and feelings honestly as she had been doing
　She could not choose ①. She had resolved to do everything for her life at her debut, completed the first album with much efforts, and was just going up the stairs to success. If she had gone down then, she couldn't have forgiven herself. And it was also impossible to choose ②. She had not written a fiction from the first, nor done the training of it. She wouldn't have known how to write it. (But, maybe because of such inner demand, she wrote her first fiction a little time later, which was "Boys & Girls".) There was no way but to choose ③ after all, and I think the songs written through the process were "WHATEVER","LOVE～Destiny"and the four songs of "A".
　But, easy as it is to write like this, can you imagine how hard it was in fact? Making songs showing own hurt of mind before it's cured is just like widening own wound. (Because to write is to fix and amplify the emotions.) And, as she is a singer of course, she must sing them and do acting in promotion videos. Was there anyone who did such before her?

More here: http://homepage2.nifty.com/morimasa/love1.html

Kinda hard to follow as the author's self-translation is a bit awkward.