I Loved Yesterday continues Yui's winning streak -- it's Yui's third release and the second to top the Oricon charts, with the debut album making it to the top five.

It's a deserved success, even though there's not much to differentiate it from her previous efforts; it's still acoustic guitar, professional arrangements (no budget cuts on strings, though it's nothing close to orchestra size), and a lot of Yui's singing, which is a wise move, since she may sound childish, but the good kind of childish, not to mention strong and versatile.

There are moments when Yui almost shows the potential to become a Japanese Avril Lavigne, for instance, on the rocking interlude "No Way" and especially on "Daydreamer," at the start of which she even manages to replicate Avril's bad girl vibe in her voice.

However, apart from those moments, Yui is content to travel a safe musical route, sticking to her trademark semi-ballads and relying more on channeling the continuous flow of sweet guitar pop than on the strength of individual songs, which come in the mellow and dynamic variety, but have the same emotional content, the keywords definitely being "summertime" and "youth" (titles like "Summer Song" and "My Generation" make that obvious).

That approach means that I Loved Yesterday runs a high risk of becoming background sound -- but on the other hand, the quality of the songs is still high enough to make the record a good mood setter, because positive and competent music is, after all, rarely a bad thing, and "summer" plus "youth" usually equals "a good time".