Deep Dive: Ayumi Hamasaki Part Twenty-Two (Colours)

    When Hamasaki Ayumi released her fifteenth studio album, Colours, I thought it was a return to form in a certain way. She appeared to regain her confidence after the rocky reception of her 2012 effort, Party Queen, and her 2013 safety net, LOVE again. Colours does what Party Queen and LOVE again does not: it is cohesive, it's concise, and it is forward thinking as it is her first album to feature the EDM genre that was wildly the staple genre of 2014. I think you could also argue that Colours is Hamasaki's most blatantly fun effort. There's a carefreeness here that doesn't feature on her previous records. This is also her shortest studio album with 10 tracks. Which plays up to be the album's greatest strength as Hamasaki really needed to cut out filler that plagued recent efforts.

    Let's look at all the pretty colours and Deep Dive!

    "Feel the Love" is our opening track here. It's fun. It's 90s-tinged. It's playful. Hamasaki came ready for the club. I appreciate the track, and I will return to it every once in awhile when the "feel the love/feel the love/we can dance all night" hook pops into my brain. It's a good opening track. 

    "XOXO" makes our second track. Also another fun one with Hamasaki throwing caution into the wind. Being this carefree 15 albums into your career is such a good idea. Hamasaki kind of broke her own mold to create a fun album for good times. And I think everyone can appreciate that. It makes the 10 tracks of the album go by quickly, and you enjoy the ride the whole time.

    Colours was seen as having a lack of emotion at the time of release, and it did suffer from promotion. But I think this is Hamasaki's first album where she embraced unusual promotional strategies. For instance, did you know all the songs on this album were featured as singles in some way? This album saw concert only singles so fans could get a glimpse into the album just by buying these singles at Hamasaki's shows. She also recut a single, "Terminal," in 2014. Which... is a choice for that time period. I think most importantly is she released a bunch of digital singles only which had tie-ins. Hamasaki must have been proud of every track on the album to feature them as a single in some way. I think she was just trying to get the songs out there in some way so maybe they might catch on. Perhaps her name-brand and reputation were too tattered by the time she did this, and that's why they didn't catch on. Still, it was an interesting promotional strategy.

    "What Is Forever Love" is my favorite track on the album. It's unapologetically 90s before the 90s really came back into fashion. Perhaps Hamasaki was ahead of the trend? I'll let you decide. It's another collaboration with Urata Naoya of AAA. And they still sound amazing together. He's not credited here for whatever reason, but that's unmistakably him. Hamasaki doesn't do collaborations on her studio efforts much, so she really shook things up here. 

    

    "Hello New Me" sees Hamasaki bridging the old vocal style with the new one, I think. Her vocals on the chorus sound like her from the early-2000s. Which is welcomed. Her vocals have always been hit and miss with many fans, but I'm a fan of the early stuff with its high pitch and everything. It just added to her charisma. Though I'm glad she sounds comfortable and confident in her lower ranges. 

    "Pray," the album's longest song, is a standard Hamasaki song done in the Colours style. Clocking in at over 6 minutes, it may overstay its welcome just a bit. Hamasaki does well navigating the song though.

    "Terminal" the second-longest song on the album is a dance bop much like the rest of the album. I want to point out that Hamasaki worked with a lot of collaborators on this effort. Both old and new. Komuro Tetsuya, Daishi Dance, and m-flo have all worked with Hamasaki before in some sort of capacity. M-flo collaborated with Hamasaki on "My Way" for their album FUTURE IS WOW released a few months earlier in 2014. Newcomers here are Rodney Jerkins and RedOne of Lady Gaga fame, surprisingly. RedOne handled "Terminal" here. RedOne is kind of a mixed bag when it comes to production. They always do a good job, but when their style became dated it became dated FAST. They still create bops though. 

    "Angel" does a good job at keeping the album's sound and theme going. We had "Pray" earlier in the tracklist, so it's nice to see that Hamasaki has kept a religious theme going through song titles and tying them into love songs. It's a small touch to the album.

    "Merry-Go-Round" is hands down my favorite single here. My favorite in a production standpoint too. m-flo did such a great job with VERBAL's verses and Taku's production. That guitar? The drop in the chorus after VERBAL hype Hamasaki up? It's wonderful. It's an A+ collaboration alone. I wish Hamasaki would have reached out and done more collaborations during this time. I think she had a good opportunity for reinvention here, and she barely took it. Some unexpected yet great collaborations like this could have spiced things up. 

    The hook on "Lelio" can be a little grating at times. I guess it depends on your mood. The track got pushed a decent amount. It's made to be danced to. And not a classy, reserved kind of dancing. 

    Then we come to our last track, "NOW & 4EVA." It's a decent album ender that does its intended job. I feel like it recaps the album's sound and themes well. And it helps Colours maintain its EDM-coated consistency. 

    Overall, I feel like Colours accomplished what it set out to do. It reminded us Hamasaki started out on the dancefloor, and she can return to it at any time. Be warned. I think it was a good way for Hamasaki to salvage her artistry after a couple of miscalculations. But the public didn't really come back. 

    Artists like Hamasaki fall from grace with the public and never regain their footing. This happens naturally most of the time just with... well, time. I mean she's 15 albums into her career after pumping 1-2 releases out yearly. I think it's hard for artists to gauge where the public wants them to be most of the time. And then there's some artists that know what the people want and how to give it to them while also maintaining artistic credibility, and they do it without breaking a sweat. Hamasaki's contemporaries Utada Hikaru, Amuro Namie, and Ringo Shiina are absolute pros at this. Meanwhile Hamasaki, Koda Kumi, and Otsuka Ai not so much. Which is a shame because they all have so much to offer though I don't know if they know how to offer it. 

    Wouldn't you love to see Hamasaki play up nostalgia with her summer and winter releases again? I think Koda Kumi should try jazz and lean into using her gorgeous voice and focus on making an album for the critics. Do a collaboration with Masayuki Suzuki. And now is the time for Otsuka Ai to tap back into her early 2000s sound. She did it the best, after all. Let me manage some careers, Avex! 

Rank: B Rank. B colorful.

Recommendation: when you got that Hamasaki bug and need to get your fix.

Standouts: 

    Feel the Love

    Merry-Go-Round

    What Is Forever Love