Album arts & tracklisting: Ayumi Hamasaki - A One

Ayumi's 16th studio album will be titled A One, as in the paper size. Paper being the one thing she won't be making with this album. The new set will drop on April 8th and feature the singles "Zutto...", "Last minute" and "Walk".

During my last trip Japan I threw a 100 Yen coin into a fountain for this woman in the hopes she would make some attempt at updating her sound and delivering something new. Then I returned home to hear previews of her album and realised that Ayu is still hell bent on dragging her sound into irrelevance with a bunch of songs which sound exactly the same as what she's been doing for years and years with no difference between them. A One doesn't sound bad. It just sounds boring. Even worse, it's a regressive step from Colours.

The only positive thing I can say about A One is that Ayu looks nice on the album covers, because the music is not up to par. Ayu fans who live for these songs will love this album because it's just Ayu doing what Ayu's always done and refuses to stop doing. But this is the exact thing that has led to her decline in populrity and sales. She isn't giving anything that will attract new fans and isn't giving anything fresh to help define her album era's or show any form of growth to her long term fans.

1. a Bell
2. Warning
3. No future
4. Anything for you
5. Last minute
6. Zutto...
7. Out of control
8. Story
9. The gift
10. The show must go on
11. Walk
12. Tell all (2015 mix) (TeamAyu edition only)

To promote the album Ayu will hold special listening events for select fans, where they will get to hear 6 new songs from the album. She will then cap this off by holding a special live chat and interview via the popular Asian social media app LINE. It's going to take more than throwing emoji's around on some app for her to push significant units of this album and win other those who have been claiming her demise for the past 4 years. And to think this woman had everybody singing her praises over her cover of Hikaru Utada's "Movin' on without you" and it doesn't even feature as a bonus track. This woman is not serious about her albums any more.