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And "Come Back" sounds like an attempt at "First Love". "Best of Soul" sounds like a cross between Hikaru Utada's "Wait & See (Risk)" and "Movin' On Without You". Half of "Atomic Energy" is cut and pasted from Janet Jackson's Control. Sequencing these songs at the top of the album would have helped the album flow better and created the illusion that maybe there's something to this album other than sheer attempts at something.Īffection is an album produced with the intent of sounding like what else was out and popular around the time, with no regard for trying to make Kumi Koda her own artist and set her apart. But these moments come within the final moments of the album, at a point when you're already done with the whole thing, IF you even made it this far. And "Can't Lose" sounding like something from a Ridge Racer soundtrack kinda does it for me, and it's the one song where Kumi's natural lower register shines in place of her wailing. "Take Back" feels the J-R&B and J-Pop fusion done right. Things do pick up at the end of the album. It's just Verbal been thrown on a song, because that's who Avex used to slap on a song for an artist who is trying to be taken seriously in J-R&B circles. Why was this put on the album? "Till Morning Comes" which features Verbal just feels empty, because that sense of rapport and necessity you usually get from a Verbal collab, just isn't here. I don't see the point in "Best Friend of Mine", which is an a capella interlude with badly arranged vocals which aren't even in the right key or the right timing. There are so few songs on this album which give you something to sink your teeth into, and too many moments which just feel purposeless.
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A song which sounds like it's comprised of Kumi's half-arsed takes, with a microphone picking her up vocals from two rooms away. And then it's right back to dryness with "Feel Me. The vocals aren't the best and the way the key change hits is a mess, but it's a good-ass song. It's one of the best songs on the album because it's one of the few instances where there doesn't seem to have been any form of agenda with this song, other than just making a good song. "Your Song" is the first instance on this album where we get something which retrospectively feels somewhat unique to Kumi Koda in light of her songs such as "Hands" and "You".
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Then the first full album track "Trust Your Love" sounds like a blatant attempt to recreate the then classic Darkchild sound, but still retain that the style of J-Pop which was typical for Avex at the time for the chorus, and it doesn't work. And if you didn't catch the reference, then you won't have taken anything away at all.
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So one track in and all you've taken away is that the song has a Janet Jackson moment. It doesn't set the album up thematically and tells you nothing about Kumi Koda as an artist. It is a straight up Janet Jackson jacking. It doesn't just sound like Janet Jackson.
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This sense of 'I'mma do what others are doing' hits from the very beginning with the intro "Atomic Energy" which features a Janet Jackson style switch half-way through. Something which would go on to be a problem for years. Kumi spends more time trying to be other artists to the point where we don't get a sense of who she is and if there's anything to her other than just being a chameleon. And this is where Affection falters from the start. A chance to sing songs like the ones she watched artists perform on Space Shower and see on MTV. Kumi seemed to treat this album almost like karaoke. The problem was that everybody was doing it, but not everybody was doing it well, and few were actually doing anything with it. As a result we ended up with these interesting hybrid songs which took the sounds of US R&B and fused it with the more melodic structures of J-Pop, where it was common for choruses to go into a completely different key and chords to just change between verses. A period when Pop around the world was starting to be more R&B leaning, and J-Music wanting in on it too. Affection is very much an album of the early 2000s.