The Best of 2009 (Part 3)

Here are the last 5 albums of my Top 15 and I’m sure you’re all curious which ones it will be. Aren’t you? Yes you are~
And I wanted to post every day but the birthday of my best friend was in the way and stuff…
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#5  Ayumi Hamasaki’s NEXT LEVEL

When Guilty was released it made it to the top of my list. But those times are over it seems. Still, Ayu’s newest album is a good piece of work. The singles were very good except maybe for Days and I loved the rock tracks on here. I’m a sucker for those. Even Next Level, the song, was good in my ears despite the fact that I see it as a summer song. Now we’re again down with two singles and I guess the next album will released in late March, maybe. I’m curious for it because the singles were kind of mediocre. But she can still surprise (with fewer interludes), no one knows.

Best Songs: LOVE ‘n’ HATE, Load of the SHUGYO, Rule and Curtain Call
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#4  MiChi’s UP TO YOU

Oh, look who’s there. The girl with the always good singles and improving PV. I’m a bit sad that she’s moving away from her indies sound but I like the way she sounds now, too. And I can’t wait for the next single. I hope she changes things up a bit. Her singles are great but after a while they tend to sound the same. But that’s still nothing negative when you look at the album tracks and you see that there’s nothing bad here. A kind of debut is better than an Ayu album. And that comes from me! Who’d have known?

Best Songs: PROMiSE, Shibuya de Punch, YOU and Why Oh Why
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#3  UPLIFT SPICE’ Omega Rhythm

I guess UPLIFT SPICE  is a band that not so many people know. And if I’m wrong, you know where you can post comments. But man, they are really great. Omega Rhythm continues with the sound from their first full album and shows you one powerful song after another. The only flaw is the playing time that is with not even thirty minutes quite dissapointing. But you can’t expect an album to be perfect and at least there are nine songs. They are just not as long as we are used from the Japanese market.

Best Songs: Omega Rhythm, Nanatsu no Umi and Amidakuji
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#2  2NE1’s 2NE1

It’s the Korean Invasion!!! Well, yes, it is. But that’s nothing bad. 2NE1 is THE Korean Girlgroup of 2009. They had everything and most of all the best producer(s). Beside the fact that the whole mini album is superb, I liked the girls themselves. The four girls are the first Koreans that got me to watch something (subtitled) idol-related that wasn’t from Japan. I can’t wait for the full album. I’m quite sad that it wasn’t released in 2009 anymore but now it can’t be too long till the release date is announced. 2010 will rock!

Best Songs: I Don’t Care (Reggae Mix), Fire and Let’s Go PARTY
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#1  Chihiro Onitsuka’s DOROTHY

What a surprise! NOT. It’s not like the only artist I wrote a lot about besides AKB48 was her. Nooo. But to be honest, I’m still not sure if the album is really that good or if it’s just still fresh in my mind. But right now I’m pretty happy with calling it the best album of 2009. She’s BACK! Great voice, great ballads and of course X! I don’t know what more to write about, I said everything in my album review. Just… listen to it if you haven’t yet.

Best Songs: X, X, X and X. And Kagerou and I Pass By and …

That was it but like in Part 0 I will tell you a bit what I’m looking forward to.
The new Ayumi Hamasaki album because there will be one. Finally a Hidemi Uematsu album. How did she manage to release in 2 years only 3 singles? And of course the new Kumi Koda album because it’s going to suck. And I hope I’m wrong with that prediction. And Rie fu should start releasing singles again! Maybe a comment on her blog would work…

UP TO YOU Review

UP TO YOU Tracklist:

1. MadNesS vol. 1
2. PROMiSE
3. ChaNge the WoRLd
4. Why oh Why
5. HEy GirL
6. KiSS KiSS xxx
7. RaiN
8. Oh Oh…
9. Something Missing
10. One of a Kind
11. WoNDeRLaND?
12. Shibuya de Punch
13. YOU
14. UP TO YOU

Some days or maybe even a week ago I received my copy of this great debut album and it came with a little extra. A piece of newspaper about Japanese baseball thanks to my middle man! I found that cool but not as cool as my CD+DVD album. And after writing about her last single before this album I wanted to make sure you also know what I think about the new songs.

Of course all four A-sides can be found on this album. The similar sounding PROMiSE and ChaNge the WoRLd very matching placed right after each other. The catchy KiSS KiSS xxx not long after those two and almost at the end of the album there’s the beautiful ballad YOU. I think it would have been better to put it at the very end but who cares?

But not only the A-sides are here for your pleasure but also the B-sides. The attitude-rich HEy GirL from the first single, One of  a Kind and the a bit weird WoNDeRLaND? which I still find has too much mixes of English and Japanese. But there are also the Kind-of-B-Side Why oh Why which is a new version of YOY from the YOU single. I don’t exactly know which one I prefer. YOY sounds really playful but Why oh Why has the richer sound. I think it depends. And so there’s one last song that we already know which is the title song UP TO YOU. It actually is a new and now part-Japanese-part-English version of the all-english Fuck You And Your Money from her indies album. It’s now more like the rest of the album, going into the dance-direction and not so much rock. I think it lacks the power of FYAYM and it just doesn’t fit the position as album-closer.

That means there are 9 songs that we (kind of) already knew before the album was released, leaving us with 5 new songs. But in reality it’s only 4 because MadNesS vol. 1 is the intro. The only Japanese word in it is her own name and it is kind of crazy with little different instrumental parts and the lyrics are also fun. “Switzerland~”. There even are some references to the songs from her indies album.
Track 7 is the next new song RaiN. It’s laid back and simply consists of an acoutic guitar and some other sound effects but you don’t drown in it. The chorus is exactly like what we know from MiChi and maybe you could describe it as a slower version of KiSS KiSS xxx.
Oh Oh… starts like it could be another song like RaiN and the whole song through you won’t get another impression. At least not if you only listen to the instrumentation. It’s MiChi’s vocals and the lyrics that make it different. We got this really soft drum beat and then again MiChi is full of attitude which is a really nice and not so often seen contrast. I already mentioned Fuck You And Your Money but even though the title implies it, the F-word never is heard in this song. In Oh Oh… it is.
With Something Missing we could almost be on her indies album again with the heavy vocoder and stuff. But that’s only for the verses since the choruses sound like her singles which isn’t a bad thing. It’s just her style and it’s still good. I would have loved more power but like this we get some feelings in the bridge.
The last one of the new songs is Shibuya de Punch and it might be the most creative song with the different vocal styles like the “normal” singing, the singing under the vocoder and her “asking”. The music also makes some changes from a really modern, fast song to a more laid back and simple styled one with some influences of traditional asian music, I think. With it’s long outro it lais the path for YOU after it.

Since I also got the DVD that came with the limited edition of the album I will shortly say something about it. The PVs are good and creative for a newcomer. Sure, PROMiSE and ChaNge the WoRLd are kind of similar but you can’t help that. I would have loved to see some Making of or a new PV for one of the album songs but at least there’s the CD+DVD version and you don’t have to purchase the PVs extra (Damn You, Chihiro!)

I can’t really say much negative about this album. We got a lot of songs we already know but some of them were new mixed or even with new lyrics and all in all are 5 new songs a good amount for an album. Which singer gives you an album of 14 tracks with only one Intro?! And all in all are the songs great anyways and if you don’t have the singles you don’t have the heard-too-often-effect. I only hope that MiChi tries out a bit more or finds her way back to the “extremer” music like on MiChi MadNesS.
I think my money was well spent.

P.S.: My favorite tracks are in italic.