Flashback Friday: Koda Kumi - 2008 Kingdom Tour | A rotten pussy fluid scandal can’t keep a bad bitch down
%20Koda%20Kumi%20Kingdom%20Tour%20%232.gif "Flashback Friday: Koda Kumi - 2008 Kingdom Tour | 🖭 Random J Pop")
Kumi’s Kingdom is officially cursed.
So, in honour of Kumi’s 2026 Kingdom tour not going ahead, let’s flashback to the original Kingdom tour from 2008.
Avex YouTube videos are blocked on this blog, for some strange reason. (Maybe Max Matsuura didn’t like some of my Ayu album reviews). So you’ll need to head over to YouTube to watch the tour in full — which is the ideal to watch it anyway, versus via a video embed on here.The rotten pussy fluid scandal of 2008 was BAD for Kumi. And she had to have felt a level of anxiety about having to go on a national tour at a time when everybody seemingly could not stand the bitch. It would not surprise me if there was talk of perhaps cancelling the whole thing. So for Kumi to embark on this tour and see the venues packed out must have felt not only reassuring, but put things into perspective that clearly not EVERYBODY in Japan was as mad about Kumi’s comments as perhaps was being sensationalised by the media, Kumi’s team and probably even Kumi herself. With how bad the coverage was at the time and a big-ass company like Coca-Cola dropping her, I can imagine that Kumi thought that her career could be in serious trouble. But that was not even remotely the case. Even so, Kumi and Avex are still tentative and sensitive about that whole period, to this day. To such a point that Kumi’s pregnancy announcement was strictly corporate, when it should have been a moment of celebration for Kumi, in addition to awareness for women in their forties. But that’s a whole other post.
It’s really fun to look back at this tour and realise the amount of cool shit Kumi was doing back then. A big ass castle on the stage. Large screens clearly showing Kumi as she performs, at a time when it still wasn’t common for every show. Fans with official light sticks. And the tour fully conveying and committing to the album title and concept in a way that the music on the album did not.
For quite some time, Kumi’s shows have felt less original, less conceptual and like they’ve pulled ideas and setups from the tours of American pop stars. They don’t feel like true showcases of her and they don’t feel like they really say anything about her. But Kingdom was a tour which gave you such a clear sense of who Kumi is as a performer and an artist.
Kingdom is not my favourite Kumi tour. But Kumi is such a great live performer and her energy is always great and just draws you in. And with this being a tour from 2008, Kumi’s discography wasn’t the mess it would go on to be. So it was very easy to sit through her tours and enjoy them. But for how much Kumi is known for her high energy, it’s the quieter moments in her shows I always like the most. The best part of the Kingdom Tour for me was around the mid-point, when Kumi performed her ballads and midtempos. The Kingdom live renditions of “Ai no Uta” and “You” might be the best live renditions of those songs. They were amazing. And shout-outs to the fan who got called up on stage and picked “You” as the song she wanted Kumi to sing. TASTE.
💿 Koda Kumi reviews: Affection | Secret | Grow into One | Feel My Mind | Black Cherry | Trick | Kingdom | Universe | Eternity ~Love & Songs~ | Dejavu | Japonesque | Color the Cover | Bon Voyage | Walk Of My Life | W Face | AND | DNA | re(CORD) | angeL + monsteR [My Name Is...] | Heart | Unicorn | De:Code
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