New single 'オヒアの木' composed by Kazuhito Kikuchi out now!

[Akutenshi]

I can't speak for others who are disappointed in the song, but I know for me, it is purely Yuta's arrangement that ruins the song.

And yes, you can argue that the decision lies in Ayu wanting the arrangement that way, fine, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the arrangement is the single thing that ruins it. The cheesy chimes at the beginning and end, the synthetic instruments, the melodrama of it all. I love Ayu ballads, but they continuously get worse every time she releases them nowadays.

I don't think people want a song about her child to be some weird, quirky pop song, but this could have been so much more poignant with even just a simple piano, maybe an acoustic guitar to touch on the Hawaiian influence? A million other directions this song could have gone in, arrangement-wise, without being "weird" and still retaining the softness and beauty of a ballad.