Production
Originally, Secret was announced to be a seven-track mini-album. After announcing that Secret was to become a full album on her official website, a message from Hamasaki on her TeamAyu fanclub website stated that she was doing overtime in the studio in order to complete the album on time.
Hamasaki stated that "Until that Day..." was originally intended to be an instrumental track composed by CMJK. She loved the sound of the guitar and the b-melody and thus asked him to compose it into a full-length track. From the beginning, she knew just what she had in mind to write about. She admitted to having difficulty matching her emotions with the complex melody of the song so she sat down at home and compiled a list of synonyms of key words and eventually finished the song. Although she tried to keep the song positive, it sparked feelings of heartbrokenness upon revealing it to her staff.
The third track, "Startin'", was recorded in New York City. According to Hamasaki, the sound in the studio made it easy for her to sing despite the challenge in vocals that she gave herself by choosing to sing in this particular style. Hamasaki stated that even though the song is generally perceived as a song for dancing on stage with dancers, it was originally intended to be a band-only song. She enjoyed her recording session, commenting that what really brought out the new vocal style was doing the recording in the New York studio with its great sound and atmosphere.
"Momentum", the eighth track on the album, took Hamasaki a total of four days to record. This is the longest amount of time she has ever taken to record a song in her whole career. Usually, she goes into the booth and records a song very quickly, but with "Momentum" she had been spending so much time in the recording booth that she felt like she might as well have slept there. Hamasaki stated that listening to the song now makes her remember the strenuous recording and brings her to tears.
The album's title track, "Secret", was the last song to be recorded for the album. Since she had so much strain with recording "Momentum", Ayumi vowed to complete the recording for "Secret" in one go. However, by doing this she put great pressure on herself and made herself quite nervous. She had considered forgetting the song and leaving the studio several times due to the stress from her pressure and the extreme time limit to have the song recorded, but she decided to simply give it her all and do her best.
By finishing this song, she had completed the recordings for the entire album. Hamasaki stated that she was almost in tears with the staff members because she actually managed to extend this album from a seven-track mini-album into a full length fourteen-track studio album in a matter of weeks.
On November 6, 2006, recording for the album was wrapped. On November 7, the tracklist and both the CD-only and CD+DVD covers were released. Secret is Hamasaki's first album to be produced and sold in Malaysia.
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