Album arts & track listing: BoA - Who's back?


Japanese BoA fans have been wondering when BoA would actually bother to release another Japanese album, after denying them one for 3 years. The details of BoA's Japanese long player have surfaced, but in light of this you could still ask the question when she is going to bother releasing a new Japanese album, because this shit right here light on new material, even by J-Pop standards. This 'new album' from BoA is nothing but a singles collection.

  1. First time
  2. Shout it out
  3. Only one
  4. Fun
  5. Message
  6. Woo weekend
  7. Milestone
  8. I see me
  9. Masayume chasing
  10. The shadow
  11. Close to me
  12. Call my name
  13. Baby you..
  14. Tail of hope

I'm surprised Avex didn't throw Japanese versions of "I did it for love", "Copy & paste" and "Hurricane Venus" on here too, alongside a 4 year old songs like "Woo weekend".


BoA's 8th Japanese studio album is titled Who's back? and as you can see from the album art BoA is looking as though she's wondering who's back too - as am I. The BoA I'm seeing on this album is not the same girl I recall taking Korea by storm with her comeback last year, but is instead the just-going-along-with-shit girl that was half arsing her music 5 years ago.

BoA returned to K-Pop in 2010 after a long hiatus exuding the type of bad arsery and confidence that one does when they've been in the game for over a decade and is setting the template for others. BoA's second comeback with "Only one" was a big deal. Not only because she delivered with a great song, but because she wiped the floor with every wig with an amazing dance routine which clearly drew the line between her and 'the rest'. Then just as hoes started wringing out the Wasabia from their wigs, BoA sent them back to the floor again with "The shadow". Her original Japanese singles and music videos however have been weak. "Only you" was a nice departure for BoA and "The shadow" was a nice amalgamation of old meets new and was the snappy pop track that most wanted from her at the time; both of which came with two of BoA's best music videos to date. But the likes of "Shout it out" and "Masayume chasing" could easily be songs which BoA released during her The face era 8 years ago. An era which I was not a fan of.

For a long time BoA was winging her album releases and not giving a great deal. With the release of Identity BoA finally showed an invested interest in song-writing as well as her image. I thought this would stick and develop. But Who's back? is looking like such a half arsed effort, that it seems as though BoA's gone straight back to square one.

Single & album reviews: Vivid | The face | Eien | BoA | Identity | Hurricane Venus

Comments

  1. Yaaaaas

    If a wig falls and nobody sees it, is the owner bald?

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  2. The Album is called, "Who's BoA?"

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  3. Double ditto to that last paragraph! I need a new "As I Am" / "Take Me Away" from her like now, and "Wonder" should've BEEN out by now! #SHAKEMYDAMNHEAD

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  4. Here's hoping this album is a fluke and the real album will be released next year with as little as 2 singles with 1 B-Side for each… T_T

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  5. 'The Face' era was good omg take that back J!

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  6. Maybe I should listen to this album to see whether I find Colours or Bon Voyage more disappointing. Bon Voyage just seems like Kumi's producers had wildly disparate views on where her music should go. When I listen to Bon Voyage I keep thinking of ways to convert it into a more refined mini-album. I wonder if I could do the same for Colours.

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  7. James Smith III5 August 2014 at 09:12

    She needs like three years to just live life and travel and work with producers around the world and then just...booom release an album. And hopefully japan is full on digital sales then and she can have a "Beyonce" moment

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  8. James Smith III5 August 2014 at 09:17

    If there is one woman who can make the same scene/entrance from pool look sexy/different it's only kumi

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  9. James Smith III5 August 2014 at 09:18

    I still rock "bad drive" and "girl in the mirror"

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  10. The song is out sounds awful

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  11. Was Identity era the time she went to USA? Well I am surprise she releasing this it is bound to flop.

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  12. had a sure feeling HOTEL was too perfect and I needed that cheap koda we all know to drop another skanky video!

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  13. No offense J, but WTF is this and why should I be listening to it?

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  14. Its really baffling how much Jin's music seriously blows as a soloist in terms of his collaborators and song choices (and that's saying something considering how awful KAT-TUN were/are, contrary to their once-phenomenal Oricon sales), this boy can actually sing and dance like nobody else at Johnny's besides Yamashita Tomohisa and Jun Matsumoto but its a shame he continues putting out tripe like this. Jin actually writes and composes most of his own (English) stuff but I guess that matters not if you have nothing much to say or any sense of individual artistic expression...

    I saw him on his U.S. "Yellow Gold 3010" tour in Houston a few years back and he was fantastic, even if some of the songs were sub-par; I thought for sure he'd bring the heat with his English debut, but much like Boa and Se7en, its just the overproduced electrotrash/Europop cookie cutter template that's all of American mainstream music regardless of genre, age, or race. No wonder it flopped so fantastically. Hikki didn't do much better than any of them in terms of sales or promo, but at least EXODUS and This Is The One were her own pet projects; nobody anywhere writes lyrics or composes in her style! Jin needs to stop with this One Direction/Owl City knock-offs and do something, you know, that's closer to his roots!

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  15. When/where the hell did this come from? Is this a new track not on the HOTEL single or a past B-side/non-album single in her now ocean deep discography...

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  16. "With Ayumi Hamasaki's album beyond saving, Avex are pumping that budget
    into trying to get some physical single sales out of their other cash
    cow: Kumi Koda."
    ~These two sideline J-pop ho's are actually running neck and neck in terms of the floppage but Koda Thirstumi continues edging Ayu Hamasucki by about 5-10,000 units per album and single. Even though Koda has more singles to her name, she apparently is still somehow more relevant by being the ''the default NOT Ayu" female solo act of choice. Namie shades them both so hard in Oricon chart performance nowadays, I'm surprised the latest solar storm hasn't sent both their careers burning into space infinitum...


    "I expected "Hotel" to be a case of Kumi looking like hooker trash in
    some art deco hotel, with an army of female maids and bell hoppers
    acting out sexual orgies in each of the rooms with the guests - pretty
    much what Britney subjected the world to on her Onyx hotel tour."
    ~Pretty much what we JUST saw in this preview clip, but with better make-up and decor than where the typical prostitutes would be used to....

    "But instead we get Kumi looking all mumsy in some Santorini looking
    setting. In this regard, the final article was outside of my
    expectation. But Kumi needs to stop fronting like this is all
    wonderfully new. It's about as basic as we would expect from J-Pop's
    original ho."
    ~This neatly summarizes the entire career trajectories of Koda Kumi since her "Black Cherry" era and Ayu with her "My Story" era; nothing bold, new or necessarily tuneful in the long-run. Just down and out crap OR barely concealed attempts at borderline copyright infringement of better-singing, sounding musicians. Utada makes it look so easy and she ain't even back from hiatus yet and God knows Namie has NO-thing to worry about for what looks like the next decade or longer...

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  17. All three songs, as expected, are a holy trinity of inexcusably awful aural sewage. And no, Lil' Kim and Christina Aguilera wore out that ratchet dress and dance nonsense from the "Money In My Bag" a while back; you can see how well THAT worked for their careers...

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  18. #DEAD at the Ayu Luggage meme..(!!!)

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  19. It didn't deserve to chart period CONSIDERING how awful it is but she just broke the record for most top 10 albums (47) by putting out what's essentially 10 tracks of Ayu drowning in the nearest wave pool with a cheap Deadmau soundtrack screeching in the background. This woman is gonna run her tired self six feet underground and never come back...

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  20. BoA pisses me off. Sometimes she's great, other times she's just plain awful. Right now she's #TeamAyu with this half ass release.

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  21. Yup, it's all about money in the bag despite how terrible it sounds. I've been waiting for Kumi to drop into them splits again.

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  22. James Smith III6 August 2014 at 06:45

    I need this info also...

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  23. Alexey Noel Que6 August 2014 at 07:35

    LOL BoA's boring as fuck nowadays at least Ayu can give us something to talk about (her boytoys for the last few years)

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  24. It's supposedly some sort of Pachinko-only single that will be released around the same day as "HOTEL"… that's about all I got from it…

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  25. Man... I've liked everything since "Only one" so I was looking forward to a new album but then FAILvex strike again... A fucking compilation of the shit nobody was here for four years ago?! And to make it even more of a joke they got her face from four years ago on the cover lol not a chin implant in sight.
    This album is gonna snatch "Colours" wig as the flop of the year (even though I don't mind that album, And I think Ku's will do better than "Bon voyage").

    The whole reason (or one of the main) that Ayu, Kumi and BoA are flopping so hard is LACK OF PROMO... seriously you'd have to put a gun to those bitches heads to get them on a TV set these days. Please get the fuck on a show and PERFORM damn girls.

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  26. Does she even give a fuck?! Damn... she may as well have left it another couple of years and staged some big COMEBACK like she did in Korea but if they'd have just thrown this shit out for it what would be the point.

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  27. "Well, That's Ayumi sat at the number 1 spot on the Oricon charts for the holidays." I miss 2010 *wipes tear*

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  28. YES! This looks good, Ku looks like she wants to be sitting on a bottle not like she would just because she has too :D LOL

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  29. I thought it was gonna be like some tripple A-Side with "Hotel" and "Money in my bag", That would be good.
    Looks like her video budget has been upped a bit anyway which is good, I think this album could do better than the last *Prays it hits Gold*.

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  30. I think Ku just started re making the same stuff over and over after "Trick", "Black cherry", "Kingdom" and "Trick" were the best time for her.

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  31. You need to do a "How to fix Ayu's career" post, And throw Kumi in there too.

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  32. I have nothing to say, this is just tragic. I'll light a candle in remembrance.

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  33. Kumi needs to sing that sing/talk/rapping shit to Namiserable; she snatched wigs with the "rap" breakdown in La*3 *and* sounded halfway decent doing the same thing on the bridge of Supernatural Love

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  34. Colours is her 15th studio album not the 12th.

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  35. YES! Where is Meisa??

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  36. BoA had a lot of tv promo for Only One (more than SNSD) but that was two years ago, K-pop artists have pretty much died since then, no one gets booked on proper music shows any more, not even the biggest imports --> tvxq and snsd

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  37. I
    was wishing so hard for the album covers to be something bad ass/messy like
    those from ‘IDENTITY’. I’m disappointed in both the album covers and the track
    list. I do like ‘Tail of Hope’, ‘Baby you..’ and ‘Shout it out’ singles but I don’t
    think that the songs will do good, all together. I’m not really a fan of her ‘Only One’ album after
    she gave me so much life with ‘COPY&PASTE’. I’m still praying for an album
    like that whether it’s a Japanese or Korean one.

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  38. Curious to see which TWO songs off of UNLOCKED were the ONLY ones you deemed worthy because almost everything on it was Quality.

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