Mini Album Review: BoA - Forgive Me

Mini-albums in the context of BoA feel a bit different from your regular mini album in K-pop. Not only was BoA late to the mini-album party, having only released her first in 2018 after 18 years (although to me 2012’s Only One was very much a mini album), but BoA doesn’t release mini-albums in place of albums the way some other K-pop acts do. BoA’s mini albums instead feel like testing grounds for her to try different sounds that she may want to include on an album. When we got One Shot, Two Shot, the vibe and sound of the album title track was carried through into Woman with songs like “Like It”. When we got Starry Night, the soulful lounge jazz vibe which went across the whole thing was carried into Better on songs like “Cloud” and “All That Jazz”, with the bounce of “Think About You” being carried over into a song like “Honey and Diamonds”. And now with Forgive Me, I’d wager that BoA’s next studio album will carry remnants of the album title track. Why that song specifically? Because it’s the only song on the mini album that feels different. And this mini album not really pushing BoA forward is one of the biggest problems with it. Even though the mini album itself is far from bad.

VERY far from bad.

BoA - Forgive Me | © SM Entertainment

Forgive Me doesn’t just feel like BoA testing the waters of things she could do on a future project. It also feels like BoA and her team are pulling from her past - bringing elements from older material, but reimagining them as new songs. But the coolest thing with this, is that it doesn’t seem like a case of just BoA’s Korean discography being looked back on, but her entire discography. And it makes sense that BoA would perhaps be feeling nostalgic and pensive going into Forgive Me, in the wake of The Greatest. And also for 202020 when she partly recreated some of her earlier music videos.

BoA has been spending the last decade of her career approaching her Korean music very differently. Almost rebranding it in a sense. Going from that girl who just did all different styles which could be sectioned off, based on whatever was popular at the time, to actually developing a sound for herself which is less trend driven, and also less market specific. Nowadays, BoA doesn’t care what the trend is. Or about the expectation of her as a K-pop idol. BoA is going with what feels good to her and says something about her as an artist. And as a result, her music has become great, and her music feels more global ready than it ever did before when she and SM were trying to make the US thing happen. You could flip Kiss My Lips into Japanese and it’d work, and be a great album. You could flip Better into English and it’d work and be a great album. BoA’s sound now feels fully realised. But it doesn’t disregard what she’s done in the past. It instead builds on and refines it. And Forgive Me highlights this to me more than any of her releases over the past 10 years have. Both musically and visually.

When I first heard “Forgive Me” and then saw the music video, 2009’s “Eat You Up” immediately came to mind. But another thought I had is ‘This is what I think the vision was for “Girls on Top”’. When I listen to “Breathe”, I hear Love & Honesty’s “Midnight Parade” (which was basically a rip off of Michael Jackson’s “Unbreakable”). And I’d say that Michael Jackson has always been present to a degree in BoA’s music, and has kinda been part of the DNA of SM for years, as it has been for many pop stars. But I really do feel his presence on Forgive Me.

BoA - Forgive Me | © SM Entertainment

I always feel that artists deliver some of their best work when they look back and actually acknowledge what they did, sit in it, and try to build on it; as opposed to running so far in the opposite direction that they lose all sense of what their sound ever was and why it clicked. And I feel that’s what we’re seeing with BoA now, and why her music is the most consistent and best that it’s ever been. She’s dissecting her sound, tweaking, refining it. But the problem BoA has now is that she needs to make better judgement calls in terms of whether it’s worth just releasing a song, a mini album, or a studio album. Because even taking into account the function that I feel BoA’s mini albums serve, I don’t feel like we needed Forgive Me at all. At least not yet, or in the form in which we got it.

Even in its brevity, Forgive Me manages to cover a fair amount of ground and do a fair lot. But on the other hand, it also feels like it doesn’t quite do enough. And with the exception of “Forgive Me”, no other song feels like it’s offering anything new, or pushing BoA’s sound in any way. And the mini album doesn’t present enough of a package. Starry Night felt like a body of work. Where-as Forgive Me feels very similar to One Shot, Two Shot, in that it feels like it feels like an album sampler. It’s just a collection of songs which probably should have been included on a full length album, where there is a better chance to bridge the connections between the songs, so that they feel like they are a part of something that they can’t be do easily divorced from.

Not every artist or label in K-pop cares about bodies of work. Only in relatively recent years have we started to see albums (both full length and mini) in K-pop be approached as albums, as opposed to a single with 11 B-sides. And the fact that album cuts are referred to as in K-pop as B-sides kinda speaks to how the industry used to see albums - as vehicles for the title track more than anything. But this hasn’t been BoA’s approach since 2015. And with Starry Night, BoA showed that she was gonna give her mini albums the same courtesy she gives full length albums. And yet... *Gestures* We got Forgive Me.

But the music here is still solid. And the fact that BoA on auto pilot or at the drop of a hat is able to still deliver songs of quality, means that a bitch is still on her shit and truly knows her sound. If only BoA had this same intuition when it came to her Japanese releases, but that’s a whole other conversation.

BoA - Forgive Me | © SM Entertainment

There is not a single bad song on Forgive Me. I adore the title track, and really like “Zip”. However, I don’t think this is a mini-album that will stick. And as good as “Forgive Me” and “Zip” are, I don’t think they will stick either. Although BoA’s mini albums aren’t widely seen as highlights in her discography, and even her albums feel fleeting and get quickly forgotten these days; despite the significant growth we’ve witnessed in BoA’s music since 2012, and that her last 3 albums were not only just great, but some of her best.

And it’s not just BoA’s sound which is growing and evolving; but her voice too. For far too long, BoA did not know her voice. But over the past decade, BoA really started taking singing seriously and discovering her sweet spots, and it makes such a difference. BoA now being at the reigns of her own music, she picks songs based on what she knows she’ll sound good on, as opposed to somebody handing her a song and her just singing it, even though it is in too high a key and the end result of BoA just yelling over the beat. Shout-outs to the chorus of “Beautiful Flowers”. BoA is no Bada or Wendy. But she can still ride a beat and sell you a song on her delivery. And you can hear on Forgive Me that BoA is having fun further exploring the different textures of her voice and the different personas she can bring to the table.

I commend BoA. Because she didn’t HAVE to go back to the drawing board when it came to her voice and singing technique. She was popular enough to just say ‘Fuck it’ and stay singing off key, with no control, zero tone and still have people saying ‘YES GIRL!’. But she cared enough about her craft and wanting to be a true artist, that she put the time in. And we hear it BoA. We hear it. It’s paying off. And BoA shows a nice amount of her vocal colours on Forgive Me, whilst leaving you feeling that she could still do a tad more.

BoA - Forgive Me | © SM Entertainment

With BoA having nothing to lose and these mini albums providing an opportunity for her to play more than she may be willing to commit to for an album, I really wish BoA had pushed the edges a little more of her sound, and been a tad more adventurous. “Forgive Me” is so big and bold, and something fresh for BoA. But that sense of freshness vanishes once the song is over. And whilst the songs are all good, you are left wanting a bit more. Which you could argue was the whole point.

BoA treating this mini album as a rock tinged mini album would have been cool and something fun for BoA to explore. “Zip” at the very least features BoA in the same bad bitch mode she’s in for “Forgive Me” and also has elements of rock because of the guitar. But that’s as much as we’re given. Weaving guitars and elements of rock into these songs would have given BoA’s sound a different edge, whilst also unifying them with traits evident in the album title track. BoA and her team of producers wouldn’t even have had to do much. It could have been something as simple as dialling up the shoegaze a lil’ on “After Midnight” or adding a bridge section with an electric guitar solo. But instead, we end up with “Forgive Me” and then other songs, and not something which feels whole and collected. An album BoA and her team should have looked to if they were looking back, is The Face. We coulda had a song which pulls from “Lose Your Mind” and another which pulled from “Brave” (one of BoA’s best songs, I don’t give a fuck). Weaving rock into BoA’s sound wouldn’t have been some crazy stretch.

OH WELL.

At least there is no dip in music quality. And the album title track was a nice bold step I did not expect from BoA, or any of the women of SM, given how boy-bandy “Forgive Me” sounds. I just wish that boldness extended a little further beyond one song. Two at a push.

VERDICT: Big big jerk, but my temper’s short

Highlights:
▪ Forgive Me
▪ Zip
▪ Sketch 🏆
▪ After Midnight