2003–2006: Decline in sales

By the end of her Arena Tour 2003–2004, Hamasaki had grown dissatisfied with her position in Avex: she felt that the company was treating her as a product instead of a person.[51] Along with her dissatisfaction over her last two studio albums (which she thought had been rushed), this led her to begin work on My Story (December 2004) early. In contrast with her previous albums, My Story had no set theme, nor did Hamasaki attempt to write "something good" or even "something that would give people hope"; rather, she simply wrote freely and honestly.[51][fn 7] As a result, the album contained mostly autobiographical lyrics about her emotions and reminiscences of her career. She approached the composition of the music with the same freedom per the lyrics. Because she liked rock music, the album had notable rock overtones.[52] She was so pleased with the result that she declared My Story the first album she felt satisfied with.[52] My Story and its singles, "Moments", "Inspire", and "Carols", all topped the weekly Oricon charts; moreover, with sales of over 1,100,000 units, My Story became Hamasaki's last million-selling studio album according to Oricon.[fn 8][53][54] From January to April 2005, Hamasaki held the nationwide My Story arena tour, her first album-based tour.[51] Also in January, she began working with Lamoureux Orchestra to create My Story Classical, a classical version of My Story; the album served as an "alter-ego" of the mostly aggressive My Story. The orchestra also created a classical version of "A Song Is Born", which was included on My Story Classical and which Hamasaki performed at the opening of the Expo 2005.[55]





rci
synthetic turf