Album arts & tracklisting: Namie Amuro - _genic

Namie Amuro is set to snatch every wig on the ORICON charts from June until September with a brand new album. Namie's 12th studio album _genic will release on June 10th. The album itself is no surprise, but the tracklisting most certainly is, as it features none of the songs which have been released between her last album Feel and now. No "Ballerina", no "Neonlight lipstick" on show, no "Sweet kisses" on the lips, nor a "Brighter day". So you best have bought the singles if you liked any of that shit.

• Anything
• Birthday
• Every woman
• Fashionista
• Fly
• Golden touch
• It
• Photogenic
• Scream
• Space invader
• Stranger
• Time has come
• A 13th currently untitled track

Five of the songs on the album ("Anything", "Birthday", "Fashionista", "Golden Touch" and "Stranger") will each have a music video. A well edited high budget extravaganza for each video would be lovely, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Namie's videos for each album are always a mix of a couple of great videos and then pieces of low budget shits.

Below are some in-depth looks at what some of the songs on this album may be about and / or in reference to.

Anything
(Pronoun. Noun. Adverb. Eternal struggle)
In reference to washed up acts who for the life of them can not stay relevant.
Gurl, Ayu can not do anything right these days.

Scream
(Verb. It's over)
What solo J-Pop chicks did when the announcement broke that Namie was dropping that new-new in June.

Namie's website gets updated with news of _genic = Screams across Tokyo from artists whose albums are also dropping in June.

Stranger
(Noun. Who is you?)
A person with whom one has had no personal acquaintance.
If your first week sales game is not strong, Namie does not know who you are. Therefore, stranger.
Don't nobody know that stranger.

Time has come
(Term. Bye boo)
Judgement day.
A moment of reckoning for an individual.
The time has come to hand me your wig.

Namie is serving Past < Future with these album covers, and if she matches those sales too, then Lord help a hoe. Each edition of _genic comes in a slip cover, which can be removed to reveal the full shot of Namie looking bitch faced, miserable, seductive, as though she's snatching somebody's man and his girlfriend's wig with her eyes alone.

The omission of Namie's singles gives us zero indication of what this album may end up sounding like. But the official press release for the album states that _genic will 'feature elements of 1980s dance music and 1990s R&B', which sounds like a nice compromise between the music Namie has been releasing as of late and some of her earlier material when she first began transitioning into a more urban sound. Feel split her fans down the middle between those who missed her sound pre Uncontrolled and felt she was selling out, and those who commended her for keeping her sound on trend and putting out songs of which rivalled and surpassed the quality of US equivalents. (i.e Namie Amuro's iconic ZEDD produced Heaven" being all kinds of better than Arianna Grande's ZEDD and Max Martin produced "Break free"). ZEDD has been confirmed as a producer on this new album, so expect Namie to be dragging through a wig full of sacks yet again when that dance hotness drops.

Expect song snippets and music videos to surface slowly over the course of May.