page_title: Colours (Ayumi Hamasaki album)
section_title: Composition and songs
hierarchical_section_title: Colours (Ayumi Hamasaki album) / Composition and songs
caption_attribution_description: English: Armin van Buuren at Sensation White.
context_page_description: Colours is the fifteenth studio album by Japanese recording artist Ayumi Hamasaki. It was released on July 2, 2014, in Japan by Avex Trax, worldwide by Avex Entertainment Inc., and on July 18 in Taiwan by Avex Taiwan. The songs on the album were entirely written by Hamasaki, while production was led by long-time collaborator Max Matsuura; it also included a variety of Western producers such as Armin van Buuren, members from RedOne Productions De Paris and Rush, Darkchild, and Fedde Le Grand, among others. This became Hamasaki's first studio album to have not been fully produced by Matsuura, and her first album to incorporate a large amount of English language. Musically, Colours is an electronic dance music album.
  Upon its release, Colours received favorable reviews from music critics. Critics commended the material and how Hamasaki included more producers outside of Matsuura, alongside praising the production. Commercially, it was not as successful as her predecessor records in Japan, reaching number five on the Oricon Albums Chart.
context_section_description: Musically, Colours is an electronic dance album. In a short commentary on Hamasaki's website, she stated that the album was influenced by dance music. Alongside with several new producers, Hamasaki and Avex Trax enlisted a wide range of musicians and composers to help with the album, including Tetsuya Komuro, John Mamann, AJ Junior, among others. The majority of the album's content was written by Hamasaki in English and Japanese. According to the lyric booklets that came with the physical formats of the album, the tracks "Feel the Love", "XOXO", and "Angel" are performed bilingually, while the remaining content apart from "Lelio" are recorded primarily in Japanese. The track "Lelio" was recorded in English with additional Japanese lyrics throughout the verses. The album track "Merry-Go-Round" includes guest vocals of Japanese rapper Verbal, who also contributed to the song writing and composition of the single.
  The album opens with "Feel the Love", which is an EDM–pop song that was composed by Komuro and produced by DJ Hello Kitty. DJ Hello Kitty provided an additional remix to the physical release of the single. "XOXO" was produced by RedOne Production members De Paris and Rush Aziz, while the composition was handled by Junior, Ameerah A. Roelants, Aziz, Mamann, and Yohanne Simon. Musically, it is an uptempo dance-pop song that was compared by a reviewer at KKBox.com to the work of American recording artist Lady Gaga. "What Is Forever Love" is a duet with Japanese recording artist Naoya Urata from the band AAA, and includes the instrumentation of pianos and synthesizers. "Hello New Me" and "Pray" was noted by a CD Journal staff member as pop ballads.
  The sixth track on the album is "Terminal", which was composed and produced by Armin van Buuren and Benno de Goeij. It is Hamasaki's second album track to have not been produced by Matsuura, her first being "Connected", which was produced by Ferry Corsten and appeared on her fourth studio album I Am... (2002). Musically, it is a dance song that incorporates elements of trance music and EDM. "Angel" was composed by Darkchild, Andy Kautz, and Ardita Satka, and was noted by Gwendolyn Ng at The Strait Times as an EDM song. The eighth song on the album was the M-Flo-produced "Merry-Go-Round", which was described by Dinah Congying Chen at Asia Pacific Arts, a newspaper published by the University of Southern California, as another EDM track. "Lelio" was noted by Dato at Kkbox.com as an "aggressive" tune by Dato, while the closing song "Now & 4Eva" was composed by Japanese musician Kazuhiro Hara.
caption: The album track "Terminal" was Hamasaki's first collaboration with Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren (pictured) in over 10 years since their collaboration effort on her track "Appears".
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