Best ~Second Session~ is a bit sneaky in how it was marketed, because it isn't a Best album in the traditional sense that Best ~First Things~ was; a career retrospective collection of songs to date. Best ~Second Session~ is basically a studio album, and a follow up album to Secret. But Best albums sell, and Avex were probably scared to brand it as a studio album when every song on it was released as a single. So, Best album it is. Even though it really isn't.
The songs which make up Best ~Second Session~ were all released as singles as part of a single-a-week campaign for 12 consecutive weeks from December to February. It was an incredibly ambitious roll-out and clever way to ensure that Kumi Koda was on the ORICON chart for 3 months straight. It certainly paid off, because the culmination of the releases that was Best ~Second Session~ cemented Kumi as a J-Pop star, a fixture and a bitch that Ayumi Hamasaki needed to keep her eye on.
The one thing that becomes clear by the time you get around to this album after following Kumi Koda's releases chronologically, is that Kumi Koda has a formula. Kumi is sticking to it. Kumi ain't changing it. Kumi ain't even trying to make it better. No matter how much it fucks up all chances of building a musical legacy. But it's also clear by this point, that this isn't what she's trying build.
A constant issue that I have had with Kumi Koda's albums is that there is no sense of musical evolution from her. Sure, some of the productions get a bit better over time. But every single album is the same thing, and Best ~Second Sessions~ is, yet again, more of the same. More of the same isn't always a bad thing. Fans who wholeheartedly liked every single thing about Affection, Grow Into One, Feel My Mind and Secret and never want for more will live for Best ~Second Session~. But for those like myself who want to see an artist change things up and switch gears from album to album, they're not going to think highly of this album. When there is no real musical evolution, and no lessons are being learned by the time an artist releases their fifth album, you have to wonder if they have anything more to give.
Best ~Second Session~ kicks off with an intro, which is like every other album intro Kumi Koda has given us on every album prior to this one; some R&B knock-off which has NO context to the album it's introducing, and does nothing to set up what's about to follow. The thing that always gets me with these album intros is that they are always followed by a song which would have worked perfectly fine as the opening to the album. Secret coulda just opened with "Cutie Honey". Feel My Mind coulda just opened with "Crazy 4 U". Grow Into One coulda just opened with "Real Emotion". "D.D.D." would have been a great way to kick the album off, but nope. We get some Truth Hurts' "Addictive" rip-off mess.
R&B is one of the fixtures of Kumi Koda's sound, but it's dialled back heavily on this album in favour of straight-up Pop and Pop hybrid songs, which make the intro even more nonsensical. And then comes along "Candy", which is "Shake It 2.0" with the same middle-eastern sound that was still popular in R&B and Hip-Hop at the time. And "Love Goes Like..." and "Lies" throws us back to the R&B sound of the early 2000s when every R&B producer in Japan was trying to be the Japanese answer to Rodney Jerkins. "Love Goes Like..." in particular is a strange song, because struggle production makes it sound like a song which was intended for Grow Into One or Affection. "Ima Sugu Hoshii" is a nice surprise though, which sees Kumi give us something a bit more chilled and soulful, void of any bandwagoning or contrivances.
Pop is a far more prominent sound on this album than it's ever been on Kumi's previous albums. Secret started to set up Kumi moving more into Pop and it's realised with Best ~Second Session~. The Pop songs on this album are genuinely good, as they've always been. The sounds are less contrived, Kumi's vocals are sharper and the end result is always a good song. "Wind" and "Birthday Eve" are sickly sweet, but they are good songs.
"D.D.D." is the Joker card of the album because it's like an intersection of Pop, R&B and the Rock sound that Kumi dabbled in on Secret with songs like "Selfish". Lo and behold, something new. It's like an original take on 2001 remake of "Lady Marmalade", and it's a great song. There is also an alternate more Soulhead focused version of this song titled "XXX" which features on Soulhead's album Naked. Some cool variations to the song, but the production on "D.D.D." is more impactful and you don't realise how much Kumi's mainline vocals add to the song until you hear it without half of them. It's a shame this sound wasn't an angle that we got Kumi Koda working more of, because it really does suit her.
Best ~Second Session~ features the obligatory album linchpin ballad, which is "You". This song is great. It's one of Kumi's best to date. It sits alongside "Hands" as one of her best ballads. This song is that real good walking-in-the-snow-crying-with-a-flip-phone shit that I live for from a J-Ballad. "You" is the best song on this album, but it sticks out like a bitch because SURPRISE, SURPRISE. The sequencing. Slapping this between "D.D.D." and "Candy" makes absolutely no sense. Especially given that the songs on Best ~Second Session~ do not run chronologically as they were released. So there was no reason to place it in between these songs. But just as a really good ballad is the standard when it comes to Kumi Koda albums, so is terrible sequencing.
Best ~Second Session~ is fun and really showed how hungry Kumi Koda was to make her mark in J-Pop and truly be seen as a contender in the game alongside veterans such as labelrival mate Ayumi Hamasaki. When you take into account the music videos, the now problematic culturally appropriated single covers and the scale of this project as a whole, it's pretty insane. But the music on its own doesn't always hold. And as was the case with Secret, we get an album where Kumi Koda's visual presence takes precedence over the music. When I think about the songs from this album, I think about the single covers or the music videos first. I have to think really damn hard about the song associated with them, and rarely do I remember, with the exception of the album stand-outs "D.D.D." and "You".
Whilst Best ~Second Session~ doesn't show much in the way of musical growth, it definitely highlights personal growth in Kumi herself. She sounds every bit the star on this album, and there's a command she has on every song. Her voice and singing technique is still all over the place, but she still brings a great energy to each song with a real sense of confidence as to who she is now versus who she was.
This album is what let everybody know that Kumi Koda was indeed a bonafide star and that a bitch was going nowhere, and Avex were gonna do the most for her. But with it being the fifth album of hers to give us the same shit that she'd given her for her four, it was really clear at this point that Kumi Koda's music was never going to grow in the ways in which it needed to, and that she'd continues to place focus on her image over her music. And it's a shame, because as good an image as Kumi Koda has, she can sing and can write good songs. But her music is very seldom the focus, and with Best ~Second sessions~ it was completely secondary.
👍🏾 It's a fun album for what it is
👎🏾 You'll remember this album for the visuals and the single-a-week shit, not the songs
Highlights:
■ D.D.D.
■ You 🏆
■ Shake It Up
■ Birthday Eve
■ Ima Sugu Hoshii
■ Somebody
Best ~Second Session~ features the obligatory album linchpin ballad, which is "You". This song is great. It's one of Kumi's best to date. It sits alongside "Hands" as one of her best ballads. This song is that real good walking-in-the-snow-crying-with-a-flip-phone shit that I live for from a J-Ballad. "You" is the best song on this album, but it sticks out like a bitch because SURPRISE, SURPRISE. The sequencing. Slapping this between "D.D.D." and "Candy" makes absolutely no sense. Especially given that the songs on Best ~Second Session~ do not run chronologically as they were released. So there was no reason to place it in between these songs. But just as a really good ballad is the standard when it comes to Kumi Koda albums, so is terrible sequencing.
Best ~Second Session~ is fun and really showed how hungry Kumi Koda was to make her mark in J-Pop and truly be seen as a contender in the game alongside veterans such as label
Whilst Best ~Second Session~ doesn't show much in the way of musical growth, it definitely highlights personal growth in Kumi herself. She sounds every bit the star on this album, and there's a command she has on every song. Her voice and singing technique is still all over the place, but she still brings a great energy to each song with a real sense of confidence as to who she is now versus who she was.
This album is what let everybody know that Kumi Koda was indeed a bonafide star and that a bitch was going nowhere, and Avex were gonna do the most for her. But with it being the fifth album of hers to give us the same shit that she'd given her for her four, it was really clear at this point that Kumi Koda's music was never going to grow in the ways in which it needed to, and that she'd continues to place focus on her image over her music. And it's a shame, because as good an image as Kumi Koda has, she can sing and can write good songs. But her music is very seldom the focus, and with Best ~Second sessions~ it was completely secondary.
👍🏾 It's a fun album for what it is
👎🏾 You'll remember this album for the visuals and the single-a-week shit, not the songs
Highlights:
■ D.D.D.
■ You 🏆
■ Shake It Up
■ Birthday Eve
■ Ima Sugu Hoshii
■ Somebody
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