Album review: Namie Amuro - Feel

Back in 2002, Namie left pop on somebody's door step, ran as fast as she could and never looked back for 10 years. But Namie is in her FEELings, and at that point in her life of latching back onto what she let go of all those years ago. Feel is Namie coming full circle with herself.

In hindsight it feels oddly like Namie was always supposed to reach this point. With an original studio album titled Past < Future following a best compilation which it references on its album cover, then an album which used an eclipse as its creative motif. Many have already dragged Namie for selling out and being commercial, but what would you expect from an artist who is signed to Avex, started off in a group covering Eurobeat and has been commercial for 20 years!? I can't condemn Namie for this. Not with the right that Feel manages to do.

Each of Namie's albums from Style onward has been heavily based on what is hot in the US at the time of its release, and Feel is no different. We get EDM, house, a bit of trance, a splash of disco and a heavy dose of wub-wub only 2 tracks into the album. It would have been very easy for everything to feel cookie cutter as a result of this, but the results are difficult to dismiss when Namie sells each of these songs with much more gusto and self assurance than she ever did when she was transitioning into R&B with Genius 2000 and Break the rules. It also helps that the songs are really fucking good. The haunting euphoria of "Alive". The top 20 chart warbles of "Rainbow". The big beat drops of "Hands on me". The euro house rave of "Heaven". The island vibes of "La la la". The K-pop bounce of "Supernatural love". The garage / 2-step kilter of the M-Flo tinged "Stardust in my eyes". Every song has a life unto itself and holds well on its own, which was the one thing Uncontrolled lacked. 

Feel is Namie's first album which makes you seriously question the eligibility of Namie releasing something in the West. UK and US radio could play "Hands on me" or "Heaven" in-between something from Rihanna or Pitbull  and nobody would question it or wonder 'What the fuck was that!?' Namie could have a strong international 4 single run with songs off of this album. Namie isn't just harvesting Japanese bundles. She wants some white girl clip-ins too.

To say Namie has a vocal range would be the pot calling the kettle a non singing bitch, when the pot's name is Pamyu Pamyu. But Feel explores her vocals in a way none of her other albums do. There's an energy and life in Namie which runs through each of the songs. She sounds ravenously desperate for some dick on "Hands on me". Super sassy on "Supernatural love". Seductively reflective on the possibility of actual sex on the beach in "La la la". This is Namie at her most confident. That shy, uncertainty Namie had about her before, it's nowhere to be seen on this album. I guess that's what shitting on Ayu's sales does to a bitch

Uncontrolled marked the first time that Namie had recorded a batch of songs entirely in English, and with Feel continuing on the trend, this is something Namie fans will need to start getting used to. At this rate, her next album will be completely in Engrish. We all joke about how Namie makes up her own language when she sings half of these songs. But for her to record so many songs in a language which is not her first and she is not fluent in, shows great bravery; as well as an appreciation for her fans outside of Japan, and an ear for what makes a song flow better. There are many chicks in J-pop who wish they had the balls to sing a verse in English, let alone an entire song. Namie's English melds better with the music here than Utada's did for a chunk of Exodus. And she doesn't rely on auto-tune and vocoders to mask how bad her English is, how BoA did on her English language debut. The only issue with Namie's English on this album is how wildly inconsistent it is. Generally, Namie's English is a shit tonne better than it was on Uncontrolled. Her English on "La la la" is so near perfect that I get emotional and shed a tear every time I hear her sing the first verse. And she sounds near fluent during the rap sections of "Supernatural love" and "Heaven". And yet, we gets 'supplies' instead of 'surprise' and 'parking rot' instead of 'parking lot'. I adore Namie. On a good day I would defend this bitch and argue she was talking about issuing aid in Iran (supplies) and that cars are susceptible to corrosion when parked in a particular way (parking rot). But I can't defend this shit when she's able to pronounce the word 'stratosphere' on one song, but not the word 'heaven' on another. I know English is not Namie's first language. But if she's going to start recording the bulk of her songs in English, she needs to brush up on it. The issue isn't that she can't pronounce the words. It's that we know she probably can or could if somebody sang the words back to her. Home girl needs somebody to quality control her English across every song.

Feel is a much more consistent album than Uncontrolled. But the sticking feeling that a couple of the songs were recorded before a musical direction for the album was settled on, it lingers across it in the same way it did on Uncontrolled. To a lesser extent, but to an extent none-the-less. "Can you feel this love" and "Big boys cry" sound completely out of place and pale sonically in comparison to the rest of the material. "Can you feel this love" isn't terrible, but it's not a song you would ever voluntarily skip to. And "Big boys cry" is just rubbish. I expected better from Dsign music. I am appalled that it took a team of 7 songwriters who were responsible for the perfection that was Girls' generation's "Genie", Jasmine's "B*TCH*S" and Crystal Kay's "What we do" to come up with something this bad.

Namie has done pop better than Britney did on Circus and Femme fatale. Has done electro and house better than Madonna has done on every album since Ray of light. She has taken a hot steaming dump on so many bitches in pop. But as good as this album is, I'm still left with a feeling of wanting more, and that this evolution in Namie should have come a little sooner. What Feel represents for me is an album which is solid and has many moments of greatness, but is let down because so much of it should have been given a couple of years ago. But I also appreciate that in many regards, Namie was somewhat of a late bloomer. Despite me picking apart this album in the final moments of my review, I admire that Namie once again switched up her sound, stuck with it and made it work. If Ayumu Hamasaki and Kumi Koda weren't taking notes after Namie wiped the floor with both of their wigs with Past < Future, then they had damn well better pull out a Muji notebook and take some fucking notes now. Ayu and Kumi need to start switching up their sound and stop playing it safe. You could argue Namie played it completely safe with this album being of a sound which has been saturating the top 20 for the past 2 years. But she still showcases a form of evolution that I've yet to see and / or hear from Ayu and Kumi, who seem overly content with just continual re-hashes.

I find it difficult to rank this album amongst the likes of Past < Future and Play because it offers something different. Play was a hot album because it was a much more refined version of Queen of hip-pop. Past < Future was a solid album because it absolutely nailed every sound Namie had been trying to go for since turning over to the urban sector. Where-as Feel feels like it marks a new turning point in Namie's career altogether. This said, as with Uncontrolled it tries to do lots of different things and the end result is a little messy. Well produced, and even exciting at times. But pretty messy and in need of a stronger focus and refinement.

VERDICT: BADDA-BADDA-BOOM. BADDA-BING. BADDA-BOOM.

Album highlights:
■ Alive 🔥
■ Contrail
■ Hands on me 🔥
■ Heaven
■ La la la 🏆 J's fave
■ Supernatural love 🔥