Korean / Japanese Singer BoA’s First English Album Is Now On Our Daily Playlist – Best&USA

I’ve said it before and I will say it again.  She is young, she is talented, she is ambitious, and at the age of 22, there are few artists who have released a dozen of commercially successful albums in three different languages.  As mentioned in my previous post (April 2008), I had my hopes and fears on her ambition to penetrate the English market.  To see a Korean breaking into the Japanese market and be successful is kind of rare.  To see such artist venturing into the USA market is almost unheard of.  But ambition aside, how does this new double album of BoA flair?

If you have been BoA-ized since the beginning of her music career 9 years ago (imagine how young she was) or recently got BoA-ized because someone bought you a BoA album as a gift (I can’t remember if it was Japan or Korea Cynthia visited back in 2006 and surprised me with BoA’s album “Outgrow”), “~USA Debut Album~” takes a whole new musical direction.  It took me some time to adjust.  Personally, I like BoA’s slow songs better because of the melody and more so, her voice that suits the melody.  Those of you who are familiar with her Japanese numbers “Love Letter” and “Winter Love” should know what I mean.  “~USA Debut Album~” is a dance album from beginning to end.  And because now that the lyrics are in English, I was initially shocked by the context that revolves around dancing and her raging hormone.  She know she has ‘a pretty face, sexy waist, pearls and lace, everyone wants to have a taste’, she wouldn’t hesitate to ‘eat you up’, and she knows you want her ‘with my dress off’.  Couple with the fact that the Ayumi’s heavily produced album was still fresh in my mind, I feared that BoA’s English debut was just another “I Believe” from the Thai singer Tata Young.  Where is Tata Young by the way?

Turns out that  “~USA Debut Album~” does grow on Cynthia and I.  The entire album is upbeat and energetic, the melody is hopelessly infectious, we end up listening to it first thing in the morning, and I end up listening to it whenever I take a long walk from A to B.  Not long after, both of us are singing to the tune.  Strange!  When we watched the DVD that comes with the album, Cynthia was very exciting over an Asian at the center of a dance music video (she loves dancing).  The document film does share a glimpse of how talented BoA is.  My only complain about the music album is the sound engineering work: Some tracks the volume boost is too high that the sound distortion is too obvious (my speakers and headphones are all cracking in some parts of a few tracks).

Besides the English debut, “Best&USA” comes with “~Japan Best~” as well.  I don’t have her entire Japanese collection so it is a nice to have.  I enjoy listening to “Believe in Love (Acoustic Version)” with her and a guitar.  And this Japanese collection comes with yet another DVD packed with 15 of her music videos.  If you have not yet been BoA-ized , there are a total of 27 music tracks and 17 video clips to get you on board in no time.