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I still love Ayu, and she still offers up very worthwhile music to me, for the most part. My love of I Am... in no way diminishes the fact that she is still capable of putting out great music.
I do think that people have been drawn to her for different reasons and at different times, and she has eras that reflect those things more or less. She's also just done so much at this point in her career that some songs which would've been nice album filler earlier in her career become more forgettable to someone who has followed her for a long time.
And it's also worth mentioning that her voice has changed. To me, I most loved her voice during the I Am... period. Her live performances during her promotion of Dearest are fantastic. Since then, her range has decreased a bit, and her overall voice has become more deep and full sounding. I think that works really well for more rock-tinged songs like Sorrows or Tell All, which wouldn't have been as good if she released earlier in her career. Whereas I loved her ballads and power ballads from earlier in her career, a lot of her new ballads are "light ballads" with airy vocals that draw me in less (though there are still some that I really, really love).
I had mentioned once in another thread that being a longtime fan of Ayu (and probably older than some members of this forum in general), I think I sometimes have a different mentality. I feel like Ayu and I have grown up together throughout the course of her career. There have been times we've moved in the same direction and had similar ups and downs, and there are times that our paths have really diverged more. But at the end of the day, we always come back together at some point. And we're never so far apart that we can't see one another. I can listen to older songs from emo-Ayu and be transported back to being a whiny teenager when they came out, and I can also listen to a song like Feel the Love and just want to have a good time and not be serious.
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