Can you think of a Japanese artist who has had as much criticism as Ayumi Hamasaki? For every Ayu lover,
there’s an Ayu critic, and when you’re one of Japan’s best products, you tend to attract good and bad attention.
“MY STORY”, Ayu’s seventh original album, was advertised as the must-have album of 2004, but the album didn’t
become the best selling album of that year. So let’s see what went right, and what went wrong with this CD.
The album starts off with a kind of rockish instrumental song with a tidbit of uninteresting lyrics, so we move on to
track two, which ironically, is the best new song of the album. “ABOUT YOU”, is the only good Ayu rock song I know off,
her voice is so well suited for this song and I love the short guitar solo it has. Unfortunately, the good feeling created by that
song is blown to pieces by that horrible “GAME” song. No matter how many times I listen to it, I hate it. The lyrics
don’t go with the music, the music doesn’t go with her voice, and the whole song just doesn’t do anything for me.
Moving on from that, we encounter “my name’s WOMEN”, a pretty much uninteresting track that seems to kill itself
through repetitiveness. “liar” is an alright song I suppose, the only thing I don’t like about it is that her voice
pinches so badly at one point that it actually made me wince. “HOPE or PAIN” is one of the nicer songs, but at this
point I really started to wonder why every song had to have a rock melody, even the nice, slower songs.
“HAPPY ENDING”, even though the lyrics are so typically Ayu, it’s actually a really nice song to listen to. Now, track nine, Moments, is the best Ayu song I’ve ever heard. I just adore the rhyme and feel of the lyrics. If you don’t want to buy this album, at least get the Moments single, because it’s just a great song. The next song, “walking proud”, is a song I originally liked very much, but then after awhile I found myself skipping it every time because the chorus just kind of hangs in there without really doing much to impress the listener. “CAROLS” is such an overrated song, it starts out so nicely, but it’s a minute and a half too long for its own good, and it’s not stunning enough to keep me captivated through the whole five minutes.
Remember what I said about not liking “GAME”? Well the same goes for “INSPIRE”, so no need to repeat that comment. The last few songs of the album aren’t very impressive I’m afraid, and the only one worth mentioning is “winding road”. I really like the music of that song so I often play it even though the vocals aren’t that good.
What really disappointed me about this album was that it seemed to be focused purely on quantity rather than quality. Having seventeen tracks, totaling over seventy minutes of time is nice, but there’s no variety on this album at all. It’s all rock music with the exception of Moments and CAROLS. Moreover, the music tends to really drown Ayu’s voice, and that just proved to me that this isn’t her genre. The cover and booklet art didn’t do much for me. I loved the way she looked on the CAROLS single cover, but the whole “MY STORY” image makes her look like a prostitute. The heavy make-up, tawdry clothes, bed-room pictures, ugh, horrible way of promoting yourself in my opinion. So should you buy this album or not? If you’re an Ayu fan, you probably have it, but if you’re new to J-Pop, I’d suggest picking up her “LOVEppears” or “Rainbow” album, because those will give you a much more interesting range of songs.
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