Released May 12, 2015
Track Listing
- Kiss My Lips
- Who Are You feat. Gaeko of Dynamic Duo
- Smash
- Shattered
- Fox
- Double Jack feat. Eddy Kim
- Home
- Clockwork
- Love and Hate
- Green Light
- Hello
- Blah
Review
Three years after releasing Only One, BoA returns to Korea with Kiss My Lips. This also doubles as the celebration of 15 years since her debut. It becomes apparent after looking at the credits for this album.
BoA is involved in the production and arrangement of the music here. She has all the lyric credits (sans Gaeko’s feature) and has either full or co-production credits on the songs. This compared to her debut album ID, Peace B, where she expectantly had no say in the music production-wise. More than what the actual music sounds like, the willingness of SM Entertainment to give BoA as much freedom as they did to make this album says a lot about how they view her.
She and Dong Bang Shin Ki helped usher SM into the new millennium when things were down for them with the disbandment of their previous acts. While BoA isn’t the workhorse for SM as she once was, to have this album created in the fashion, it was means SM not only trusts her to complete a project, but it’s also a thank you for all the work she has done.
Sentimental value aside, how’s the music? Solid all-around. The album sounds like someone making music just to make music. It sounds like she had fun recording. Take, for example, the title track Kiss My Lips. An electropop production with some hip-hop-esque drum and snare patterns coupled with BoA’s voice creates a song that makes this song into the song all pop songs strive to become: infectious.
Don’t sleep on non-single tracks, either. Shattered deserves a mention here. In the same vein as Kiss My Lips, but it sounds more spaced-out and futuristic. Some other highlights are her more upbeat and happier-sounding songs like Fox or Green Light.
Unfortunately, there are some duds on the album. The ballads here don’t showcase BoA as well as the electropop or the R&B songs do. Love and Hate does a bit better than Hello in having BoA shine, but both pale compared to everything else and become the skippable songs on the album.
In many ways, Kiss My Lips sounds like the album she’s always wanted to make. 15 years distilled into 12 tracks. For someone who has been criticized as a “manufactured star,” she’s certainly come out the other side more of an artist than anyone probably thought she would be. Good for her.
