little. yellow. different. A weblog by Ernie Hsiung

BoA and the search for the elusive asian popstar

Will BoA be the first Asian pop star to reach super-stardom in the United States? The short answer: No, but it won’t be for a lack of trying.

The long answer: Anyone who has a basic knowledge of J-Pop or K-Pop music knows who BoA is. If you don’t, here’s a brief synopsis: A 12 year old Korean girl auditions and gets drafted into the Korean music scene. She becomes huge in South Korea, then promptly goes to Japan and records a bunch of #1 Japanese records, making her the first Korean to do so. She promptly becomes a superstar all over Asia. Now BoA is 20 and there are dreams for her to make it big in the United States. Don’t they all, really? But this will be easier said than done, because — and let’s be brutally honest here, because I’m actually a really big fan of BoA since her Kimochi Wa Tsutamaru days — the girl can’t pronounce her Rs.

No, seriously. Take this song, performed by teen fashion dolls turned bad pop band Bratz, for example: I played this for my ex once and when BoA butchered the line “All the Girls” as “ARR DE GURRS,” I lost car radio privileges for the next two years.

So now BoA is giving another go at it with her new single “Eat You Up,” and the big guns have been called: the song is produced by Bloodshy & Avant, who produced another song you may have heard of called “Toxic,” by Britney Spears. Her video producer is Diane Martel. And Flo Rida is rapping on one of the remixes.

If I was the agent of a pop star, those are the names I would want to be using, really. But at the end of the day, the great American music machine is more than that — it’s promotion, it’s going to radio stations, it’s going to TRL and having 15 year olds from New Jersey being able to love you through an accent and a lot of peace signs. And it’s a shame, because she has the image skills, she definitely has the dancing skills and watching an exhausted-looking BoA learning hip hop moves and auditioning dancers and dealing with Americans that speak 100-words-a-minute, she most definitely has the drive and the work ethic. And it’s for those reasons that I really want her to do well when her single comes out in digital format on October 7th.

But given the track record of Asian in the American music industry? I’m not holding my breath. At all. Here’s to vocoders and chest pops taking you to the top, girl. Vocoders and chest pops.

Also, BoA, if you’re reading this: THE GOLD HAT? REALLY? SERIOUSLY? YOU’RE BREAKING MY HEART.

But does she have a serial killer or evil spirit stalking her? And what does that handsome, mysterious stranger have to do with all of this?

This song is not exactly popping. I rather like the Bratz song better. I mean, how convincing is it for a 120lbs or less girl to sing “Eat you up”? A 300 lbs man, maybe.

I can’t lie. When I first read “BoA” I thought you were talking about Bank of America. Damn this rotten economic downturn!

BUT, I did check out her website quite a bit and, despite not being a terribly huge pop fan (bad gay, I know), I really like BoA’s style. She’s got this interesting grunge meets pop style that seems more natural to her than it does to Gwen Stefani.

[...] since Ernie posted about it, I’ve had “Eat You Up” by BoA in my head. Correction: I’ve had the chorus [...]

Wasn’t Shin-wha of Korea pretty close in crosing over to American pop?

This just reminds me of the attempt by Hikaru Utada who had the benefit of a big label push, big name producers (Timbaland, Darkchild), and the ability to speak un-accented english. Part of that failure was just bad songwriting, though it makes me wonder if she failed how can anyone else hope to succeed?

Not a bad song but feels like we’ve heard it so many times before. If I was trying to bring BoA to the main stream I’d have her remix the Lain theme song with a hard rock band. She could be the new Evanescence.

I have at least one BoA CD, but I didn’t know the story behind it until now. Interesting! I would love it for an Asian pop star to make it big in the US. I liked Hikaru Utada’s English language CD, as different from her Japanese stuff as it was.

It’s not just her R… her L as well. But hey almost all non-English speaking Japanese have weird pronunciation when they speak English - but that doesn’t stop their songs from being KICKASS good!

But that’s just me. I am biased.

Funny thing. When I was growing up in the Oakland Public School System, I had that embarrassing speech impediment of sounding like Elmer Fudd too– I couldn’t pronounce my “L’s”. I had to have a speech coach help me through second and third grade. Heck, if I can do it, so can BoA! Just takes a 300lb black woman with infinite patience, a bad ass attitude and a mini recorder to shame you into fitting in (kidding, Much <3 to that woman decades ago).

HOW DARE YOU ERNIE! Boa will rule the world, if she can only say ‘world’. How I miss the days of us listening to BoA while falling into Canadian ditches. I still love ‘Valenti’.

Aminiature rocked the indie world in the early 90’s with lead singer John Lee http://www.myspace.com/aminiature05

Language won’t be the problem. I think she is really good!!!