Every few months I do nothing but listen to Matsuura Aya’s music for a few days – even though it’s been years since she’s put out any music, she’s still one of my favorite performers. Her music was consistently great and Aya is incredibly talented.

Chocolate Damashii was the last major single Matsuura Aya released and it’s a bit of a weird one. At the tail end of Aya’s career she was performing a lot of ballads, a lot of jazzy music, things that would show off her vocal prowess more than her earlier pop hits. So a cheerful, fast, almost classic pop song like Chocolate Damashii feels like a departure from Aya’s singles around that time like Egao or Kizuna.

That’s not to say Aya doesn’t sound great in Chocolate Damashii – far from it. In this song she sounds almost effortlessly good. It’s not a song where she shows off, but instead one where she just sounds great. The song is also a nice, easy to listen to mid-tempo song. It’s not quite as fun and poppy as Aya’s early work, it’s not quite as interesting as her later albums, but it’s somewhere in between – mature but sweet. I think because of that the title of the song works really well, and it works well for its intended purpose – a Valentine’s Day gift to Aya’s fans.