Quote:
Originally Posted by douggn
I think some of ayu's music is, if you cant connect to it, it wont have meaning to it, her past stuff generally has memories attached, making them more special. You just have to make some new memories for her new songs  But if you cant connect to her lyrics then the song will just usually pass by. And I think her albums are more her thing now, compared to her past stuff which I would imagine had a bigger marketing team. Now she just does what makes her happy |
I think that's a good point. The Hamasaki Ayumi brand was a machine back in the day. There was a lot of promotion, hype and anticipation attached to many of her releases in the past. Now it's more like going through the motions. I don't think this makes ayu's music today any worse personally than it was in the early 2000's. I think she's still trying new things and expressing herself in new ways but some fans have a hard time connecting to it. She changed and so have we.
I honestly prefer her albums as a whole recently than in the past. For her older songs, I usually stick to the best albums. The only album I enjoyed start to finish (sans mini's) was RAINBOW. It's not so much I didn't like her music back then but albums like Love songs, COLOURS, A ONE and Made in Japan feel more like whole entities and are more enjoyable for me from start to finish. I think that is something she worked on throughout her career.