Again, the Japanese pressed CDs of Mai Kuraki don’t come cheap. Three times the price of a normal disc. HMV Singapore charges me the price of one English CD as shipping fees. I guess it is sort of fair. If only I could read Japanese and order online instead. Pondered in front of the counter for just a moment, I grabbed one copy. The truth is, quite a few times I hesitated for too long (it could well be less than 24 hours) and the stock was gone. And I had quite a tough time trying to hunt for them.
Onto her 8th album, “touch Me!” entered the chart at the #1 position, after three misses from her previous albums. If you like her sensual and light R&B kind of voice, well, she sounds pretty much the same as before. Had “touch Me!” stopped at the 10th track, that would have been much better. I love the oldie “Top of the World”. Just not sure if I like Mai Kuraki’s rendition. And the 12th track is a remix of track 4 that is a bit too dreamy to my liking.
The good news is, if you ignore the last 2 tracks, “touch Me!” does have a good mix of fast and slow pace, mostly catchy. My favorite track would be “Break the Tone” and “Catch”. Below is the video of the opening track “touch Me!” Fans would love this new album, I bet.
2 replies on “Mai Kuraki (倉木麻衣) – touch Me! – Odd Song Choices Aside, A Decent Effort Nonetheless”
well,i like a lot of this album,top of the world is like a breeze sweet and fresh,but i also enjoyed touch me,i really like,all cd is good,her musics are sweet.
Agatha – I only have her 5th album “Fuse of Love” onwards and i wish I could listen to some of her older works (Japanese CDs are kind of hard to get and are very expensive in this part of the world).
I like the song “Top of the World” too, especially the original. Just that mixing oldies with J-pop seems a bit odd for me … ha ha ha.
But I like her nonetheless.