Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Asian Import of the Day: BoA

BoA is a 22-year old Korean pop wunderkind, who has enjoyed tremendous success in both Korea and Japan in her nine-year career. If you do the math, that means she's been in the business since she was 13 (with two years of training even before her debut), which is why I always equate her to be the Korean Britney Spears, minus the CRAZY stint and the K-Fed period and the kids. I mean she's worked super hard, selling millions of records in Asia, winning all sorts of awards and accolades (including MTV Asia's Most Influential Artist Award), and has tons of hits under her belt, but she's also kinda given up any semblance of a normal childhood/life to make all of that happen. Very a la Britney.

Anyways, in September, her label announced that she'd be making her American debut, and subsequently, her US debut single "Eat You Up" was released. I think it's catchy. Is it enough to win over the American public, as no Asian pop star crossover has done (does anyone remember Coco Lee? Yeah, thought so..)? I don't know, the US music scene is notoriously hard to break into as an Asian. Her handlers seem to be making sure that she is not just another failed crossover, as the BoA publicity machine has gone into overddrive. She's performing at the KIIS FM Jingle Ball in LA, and she's performing live in Times Square, in the MTV studios, on Dec. 3. All very interesting stuff, so we shall see how she does, come the release of her first English album early next year. Eat You Up is available on iTunes now.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember Coco Lee. I still have couple of her songs somewhere in my iTunes.

Then again, I didn't even know she tried to cross-over to American markets.

Anonymous said...

wow, I didn't recognize her at all. I'd rather have her break that barrier then Rain.