hamasaki ayumi - appears

my mind might fail me but this was maybe the first original track i've heard from hamasaki ayumi as i kept seeing her name as she'd been the subject of heavy remixing at the time. i was a big fan of armin van buuren and his remix of "appears" is still amongst my favourites of all time, but it isn't my favourite remix of an hamasaki ayumi track. that would the alternative richard scanty remix of "end of the world" or the "no. 1 blueberry wonderful" version of "unite!" done by uehara kikou.

"appears" was one of the singles from hamasaki's second album "loveppears" and in single form was themed as a christmas song with bells and everything. the song itself is about a relationship that turned sour and the one part being lonely as the season rolls by, enough said. for me i saw the video first and it's hamasaki in an late summer/early autumn new york with some really fake computer snowflakes falling on her after the break.

it's a catchy song and this was why i got hooked on hamasaki and my foray into otaku-hood started properly. i wasn't just eating a lot of sushi and watching the occasional animé, i was listening to japanese music. at first i had no clue on what the lyrics but as this is pop music, most lyrics are about love....shocking isn't it? if anyone did some further research on her lifebeing, as she wrote most of her own songs, you would understand why she wrote a whole lot of songs about lack of love which many people have attributed to her father leaving the family as hamasaki was just a child.

there is actually essays and such with a load of amateur psychology used regarding her status floating around the web and i think i've read many of them as i was trying to soak up anything hamasaki. nowadays i don't really care and i haven't actually listened to any albums following '05 "my secret" but i still enjoy her works prior to that. yeah, that's about it.

listen here (dailymotion)

note: that i didn't do anything christmas themed writing for last year and this is about as far as i'm going to go, even on christmas eve. also you can only buy this on japanese digital stores as avex pulled their songs from the american itunes following business bullshit. oh, the ease of getting this digitally as i had to purchase this from yesasia.com back in the day.