Dance – WilfridWong.com

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

BoA

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.

Moby – Last Night – Not Quite Close To Play But Way Better Than 18 Hotel

I really love “Play”. Oh yes, I do. Perhaps it’s because of the disco clubs by the beach of Grand Bay, Mauritius, that my project team often frequented (oh sweet days of Banana Café), and at that time, Moby’s “Play” was hot. It was the sunset, the sea breeze, the sand, the resort, and the laid-back-good-old-days-post-modernization of an island nation off the coast of the African continent that gave me the illusion that I was dancing in the year of not 1999, but one or two decades prior to that.

Moby’s ambient electronic music blends well in such a dreamy land of nowhere, a tourist paradise. How I miss Mauritius.

My sentimental bias aside, I think Moby fans would agree with me that “Natural Blues” from the “Play” (1999) album is probably one of tracks that made Moby known to the International mainstream music scene. The chorus of “Oooh, Lordy, troubles so hard and Don’t nobody know my troubles but God” just sticks to our heads.

The subsequent album releases “18” (which I owned) and “Hotel” (which I got wiser and decided not to own) were major disappointments to me. In “Last Night”, Moby took a slightly different approach. Most of the vocal tracks are sung by talented unknown artists, in which Moby mentioned that they are much easier to work with without the complication of legal issues and big record companies’ involvement. It works. Though it is not quite close to “Play”, “Last Night” is a pleasant album to listen to. Less experimental in nature, Moby returns to his disco dance music root and enriches each track with his distinctive electronic ambience touch.

I personally don’t think Moby is particularly strong in his lyrics department. But who cares about lyrics when you are half drunk on the dance floor or about to collapse onto the couch? So I have no qualm that the CD does not come with a set of lyrics; and they should as some of the lines even the Internet community cannot make out. Inside the killer track “Alice”, the word “Jodice” keeps repeating and Cynthia and I one time looked at each other in the car and said, “Who is Jodice?” Or “What is joh this?” OK. From what I researched in the net, the phrase in question could be “do this”. Then again, you will never know.

Why does the song titled “Alice” anyway when it doesn’t even get mentioned in the song? Perhaps it is a reference to “Alice in Wonderland”? Perhaps it has something to do with the lyrics “Can you become girl here in the fun world?”

Anyway, who cares?

If you have nothing against rap singing style, the first single “Alice” will please you much. The majority tracks of “Last Night” are loaded with up tempo music while the last few tracks substantially darken the mood and the album is concluded with the title song “Last Night”, a ballad. That last song does remind me of the closing hour of the dance floor when the DJ usually plays a slow song to wrap up the evening or early morning. How appropriate.

Featured below is the video clip of “Alice”. Don’t expect the image to reflect the current decade. It is Moby baby. Let’s head back to the disco days with us having bad hairstyles doing crazy things; things that you don’t even want to recall. Admit it!