[lfe.]

I finally got around to listening to Finally. I think at a first listen, a lot of people won't like a lot of the re-records. I love them all though because her audio doesn't seem to be altered much from studio edits. This is the real Namie. I've grown to be a huge Namie fan ever since the first live concert I saw of her on DVD/bluray. Its her live performances that has made me grown to love a lot of songs that I never enjoyed when listening to the studio releases. Her voice may not be at her prime as it was 5-10 years back but I love this "unedited" Namie vocals of Finally.

A lot of people on other sites hating because of the song choices of this compilation album and that there are only a mini-albums worth of new songs, but the quality of these new songs are possibly better than any of her recent albums. Not sure you can really count Just You & I and Hope as new songs since they are new OST releases, but In Two, How do you feel now, Showtime, Do It for Love, and Finally are all spectacular. As for the song choices, if they are real Namie fans, they should know that a lot of her songs, while they may be popular to the public she doesn't like a lot of them, and that she never gave a f### about how people perceive of her, so what she gives, we choose to receive. And if you don't like it, then just don't buy it. Its not like its going to hurt her sales, because Finally is ruling Japan right now. All the music stores, Tsutaya, Tower Records, etc, all their workers are wearing "Namie Amuro 25th Anniversary" T-shirts and her posters are everywhere.

In Two.... is just simply perfect. As the final EDM track of her career, she leaves a worthy successor to Alive and Stranger. Clubs in Japan rarely if never play any Japanese music, but I can see Tokyo clubs like Atom or Camelot playing In Two if there are Japanese DJs. Finally is beautiful and so sad to listen to. I hope in her tour she will sing it as the final song in the tracklist, though it will just bring me and everyone else to reach for their Kleenex.

Speaking of the tour, do you guys think if you request for more than 2 tickets, it decreases your chance of winning the lottery? I mean, I'm sure we all have very low chance of winning the lottery in general, but do you guys think requesting more tickets lowers it even further?