Just read that BoA's trying to break into the US market now, and is releasing an album early next year. Well, I've heard her first single, and while it's not exactly my type of genre, it still manages to be catchy after a bit. But it's not that spectacular a song, I must say.
I'm quite skeptical of Japanese artistes trying to enter the big US of A's domain, for a few reasons. First, there are always lines of broken English weaved into these Japanese songs. Lines like "I know loneliness is best friend" and "mama says a man is dreamer", both from 抱きしめる from her OUTGROW album, make me cringe everytime I hear them. Well, not that much anymore, since I'm a little desensitized to this by now. Point is, I've heard BoA speaking English before, and she can do so perfectly well. She doesn't even have the weird accent(another point which makes me skeptical). I find it quite hard to believe that she has no power over minor edits to the lyrics to make them grammatically correct. But that's an aside. Thankfully, these grammatical errors don't carry over to their US releases.
If you've actually been following this blog since... a very long time ago, you'd know that I was totally distraught and disappointed with Utada Hikaru's foray that was Exodus. Some Exodus it was, because the tracks left my playlist pretty quickly. Anyway, if you know that, you also know that I hated it for it's mostly trashy lyrics, which is the next point. It feels as though it's a necessity in order to get your music heard over there. Or maybe, it's just the catchy hip-hop tunes and less of the lyrics that they look out for. Whatever the case,the lyrics in BoA's single (which is entitled Eat You Up) is quite ridiculous. Lines like "I'll eat you up... So yum yum..." leave me speechless.
And finally, the sleeeeeaze. Let's see what I mean!
The US Version:
The Asia version:
Why oh why? The Asian version is quite whacked, but those dance moves are pretty slick. The US version just has BoA and some random dude in suggestive poses, along with some less fantastic dancing.
After the bad experience with Utada's Exodus, I hope I'm wrong this time round, and BoA releases tracks that I wanna listen to.
I'm quite skeptical of Japanese artistes trying to enter the big US of A's domain, for a few reasons. First, there are always lines of broken English weaved into these Japanese songs. Lines like "I know loneliness is best friend" and "mama says a man is dreamer", both from 抱きしめる from her OUTGROW album, make me cringe everytime I hear them. Well, not that much anymore, since I'm a little desensitized to this by now. Point is, I've heard BoA speaking English before, and she can do so perfectly well. She doesn't even have the weird accent(another point which makes me skeptical). I find it quite hard to believe that she has no power over minor edits to the lyrics to make them grammatically correct. But that's an aside. Thankfully, these grammatical errors don't carry over to their US releases.
If you've actually been following this blog since... a very long time ago, you'd know that I was totally distraught and disappointed with Utada Hikaru's foray that was Exodus. Some Exodus it was, because the tracks left my playlist pretty quickly. Anyway, if you know that, you also know that I hated it for it's mostly trashy lyrics, which is the next point. It feels as though it's a necessity in order to get your music heard over there. Or maybe, it's just the catchy hip-hop tunes and less of the lyrics that they look out for. Whatever the case,the lyrics in BoA's single (which is entitled Eat You Up) is quite ridiculous. Lines like "I'll eat you up... So yum yum..." leave me speechless.
And finally, the sleeeeeaze. Let's see what I mean!
The US Version:
The Asia version:
Why oh why? The Asian version is quite whacked, but those dance moves are pretty slick. The US version just has BoA and some random dude in suggestive poses, along with some less fantastic dancing.
After the bad experience with Utada's Exodus, I hope I'm wrong this time round, and BoA releases tracks that I wanna listen to.