[njanjayrp]

Originally Posted by *Petit*

That's a very interesting take on it. Perhaps that makes sense looking at the lyrics, I don't know, but Love Songs, Party Queen and Love again are very different musically within the context of her discography. Love Songs also is a very particular album musically because it has a cohesive concept much more so than most of the albums she released since MY STORY. Almost all the songs are written by the same person and the arrangement of almost all the tracks is based on a similar take "what if we mixed tetsyua's electronic music and added classical instruments and acoustic elements". It's also a departure from the formula with a summer song and winter ballad etc.

The promotion and commerical performance of Love Songs is more similar to the albums before it than PQ and later albums. LS had singles leading up to it and performed relatively well. Ayu always had a drop in sales from one album to the next, but the drop from RnRC to LS is much lower than from LS to PQ and lower than many of her other drops in terms of %. Also Five was a relatively big success for her. Something really changed with PQ.

I would probably agree that her "golden time" could be set from 2000 to 2006, although I think you could also say it's from 2000 - 2004 (ending with MY STORY) or from 2000 until the release of FIVE.

I think it was the scandals that killed both PQ and LA's sales.