Full tracklisting & covers for Kumi Koda’s first album of 2022, Heart

‘What do you mean first album of 2022!?’. Baby. This is motherfuckin’ Kumi Koda. There could very well be second album of 2022 which hits before Christmas.

Days after I posted about Kumi Koda’s album dropping in March, Avex went and dropped the album tracklist and an additional date. I guess that new album release from Hikaru Utada has got Avex upping that treadmill speed. Like it will make the slightest bit of difference. But speaking of Hikaru Utada, Kumi’s latest album shares something in common with it. But we gon’ get to that.

First. The album covers and the songs.

Kumi Koda - Heart [CD + Blu-Ray] | © 2022 Avex Entertainment Inc.

Kumi Koda - Happy [CD+DVD] | © 2022 Avex Entertainment Inc.

Kumi looks great on the covers. If Kumi won’t give us anything else, she is gonna look good on an album cover.

1. Bow Wow
2. Sure Shot
3. Atlas
4. Good Time featuring AI
5. Outta My Control featuring ØZI
6. Anemone
7. 100 No kodoku-tachi e
8. To Be Free
9. Red
10. 4 More
11. Doo-Bee-Doo-Bop
12. We’ll Be OK

Kumi Koda and AI. On the same song!?

The tinnitus is hittin’.

“Sure Shot” will be the last main single before the album releases physically, and it will get itself a music video. Heart will not be releasing in a CD only edition. It will instead release in CD + DVD and CD + Blu Ray editions, with a third CD + 2 DVD + 2 Blu-Ray edition releasing exclusively for Kumi Koda’s fanclub. This may seem strange to some, until you hear the next part. And this is where Hikaru Utada comes into it.

Kumi Koda’s album Heart will release digitally on February 2nd. A whole month before it releases physically on March 3rd. Hikaru Utada's 2022 album Bad Mode was released in a similar fashion; a digital release first, with the physical release coming later.

When it was announced that Hikaru Utada was doing this, I wasn’t entirely sure why. It seemed like a strange move to prioritise digital sales and streams over physical sales. Then I’d read that Hikaru’s album wasn’t finished in time for their livestream gig, which was shot in November to be livestreamed in January simultaneously with the digital release of the album, and to be included on the physical edition in February. So if the plan was always for the physical edition of the album to release in January, this would have given Sony a short window to get the album mastered, get the gig mixed, edited, graded and ready to be put on a disc to then go into pressing for mass production in time. It's an insane timeline. But digital releases allow for a staggered approach, when all you need are the songs up front.

Digital releases coming a month before physical could well become a common release strategy in Japan for situations where there is video content which is set to be included on limited editions of albums being produced close to the release date. Why push the whole release back, if you can get the digital out sooner?

I wouldn’t think anything of this release strategy in the US or UK, but it’s wild for Japan; a market which values physical sales above all else, and has been slow to embrace streaming and all things digital. But I think it can work. If the physical editions of albums include video content, then fans will still go out and buy them, regardless of whether they like with they’ve been streaming for 4 weeks or not, just for the DVD and Blu-Ray content. Why even bother manufacturing CD only editions? Just put that money and effort into the limited editions.

It’s a big show for two established acts such as Hikaru Utada and Kumi Koda who can still do decent numbers (one a whole lot more decent than the other) to release albums this way. I won’t sit here and say Kumi is copying Hikaru, although she might be. Because Kumi lives to copy other hoes. But in all truthfulness, it’s a sign that maybe this is going to be a thing in J-pop now. Even Perfume did a similar thing in 2021 with their song “Polygon Wave”; although there was no announcement up front that a digital release would be followed with a physical one.

Ayumi Hamasaki was shockingly ahead of this curve back in 2016 with her album M(a)de in Japan, which hit a streaming service 7 weeks before releasing physically. But whilst 2016 doesn’t seem like too long ago, streaming wasn’t then what it is now. And Ayu’s popularity was already being plunged out of the toilet by that point.

HENNYWAY.

Kumi Koda’s Heart releases digitally on February 2nd, with the physical editions releasing on March 2nd. 

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