The Queen is back.

If you don't understand the shiny packaged music that is Kpop, this is not for you. Otherwise, fuck yeah. BoA is back, and in Kpop terms that is cataclysmic. Jpop fans would probably howl in protest, but I personally think she's more talented than Ayumi Hamasaki because Ayumi could never dance like that.

BoA started out early and achieved success in both the Korean and Japanese charts at the young age of 15, at a time when the Japanese and Korean markets were hostile to each other, having only recently opened to each other since World War 2 following the joint hosting of World Cup 2002. That gave the rising Korean wave all the impetus it needed to gain ascendancy and become mainstream, with the release of the ridiculously weepy Winter Sonata and the advent of the unstoppable pop sensation known as BoA forming a twin pincer attack to ensnare both the young and the old. As anyone who has encountered a pincer will know, it has one hell of a deathgrip.

For once, Japan had a 15-year old female idol who was actually cool and unafraid to show it, instead of one prancing around in a school uniform acting cute while selling her underwear in some vending machine elsewhere. Even the Japanese got sick of their own twisted shit that revolves around a fantasy of eternal adolescence. But old habits die hard. They have recently taken to another group that is called AKB48 that is exactly like that, only that there are literally hundreds of these nubile cutesy teenage girls in the same group. After all, it is like drug withdrawal, after awhile one girl won't do, you need one hundred to get that same twisted kick.

Well, going back to the queen of Kpop, how talented is BoA? She writes some of her songs, she dances extremely well, and her singing would put most of the current batch of Korean idols to shame. To put it succinctly, she is not only the predecessor of the current batch of Korean idols, she is also more talented than many of them put together, and on top of that, she achieved success by herself at an age when most of them were still training in Korea, and in the traditionally closeted and xenophobic Japanese market. That means she had to sing in Japanese, because there is no other way the Japanese will buy your albums, and she paved the way for all future Kpop groups in Japan.


She did this at 15. While I was 15 I didn't know jackshit. Even now this is still ridiculous for a 15 year old.

She then lost her way a little in trying to expand to the US, because no matter how hot or talented you are, Americans will not hit anything with small eyes, even if that thing is BoA, but they will hit rubbish like Paris Hilton and Justin Bieber.

But now she's back and I'm loving it, though I still hate McDonalds for charging 30 cents for curry sauce. Capitalist bastards.

I'm going to enjoy this while it lasts.