So, just the other day I decided to revist Colours lyrics.
I find it funny that Feel the love and XOXO are both songs about partying your issues away. They seem lighthearted, but they seen to sugest there's something darker behind the party, pretty much like Party Queen up beat tracks.
What is forever love talks about regreting growing apart from someone you love, even if it felt like the right thing to do at the time
Hello new me is about being changed by a new love OR changing in order to keep a new love, followed by pray, a song about loving someone from apart and praying they found happiness even far away.
Now, this is where things get interesting. After singing about partying your issues away, about going back to someone you got separed from and changing in order to keep a relationship, Ayu sings Terminal:
followed by Angel, were Ayu says she would become an Angel in order to be back with whoever left her. Those 2 songs paired are basically Ayu saying "I would do anything, good or bad, in order to be together with you again".
Merry-go-Round pretty much ressonates the overall album feeling, all the "I miss you", "I regret leaving you", "I would do anything to get back to you again", but this time it goes on a different direction:
Followed by LELIO, were Ayu pretty much goes on full "fuck it, I do me, you do you":
NOW & 4EVA is the final track, and it got the classic Ayu sound. After all the ups and downs about a failed relationship, she still is sad, but she also knows there's nothing else but to move on, even if she moves on still loving that person. This part of the lyrics grabed my attention:
Usually, when Ayu talks about having the same dream, I feel she is talking to her fans. "The dream", in this case being her career, or herself as a popstar. Ayu herself once said she was a dream during that Time magazine interview.
I believe this is an album about trying changing in order to please her fans, going as far as pursuing a trendy sound and having a very sanitized and fashion foward image, something that was asked constantly to her by the public (and some of the points people used to justify why Namie was overselling her), just to realize in the end that despite all the suffering, she can't be anyone else but Ayu.