‘Queen of K-pop’ Boa talks new album Better, songwriting with SM founder Lee Soo-man and the three most memorable songs of her 20-year career – interview
SM Entertainment creative director Boa has released plenty of hits over the years, from My Name and Only One to No. 1 and Atlantic Princess – the South Korean idol’s new album transcends genre, featuring tracks penned alongside SM Entertainment founder Lee Soo-man and producer Yoo Young-jin
For a 15-year-old girl, blazing a trail into a new market – currently the second-largest recorded music market in the world – might have seemed like an unachievable goal, but she more than made it.
In 2002, she became the first Korean to top Oricon, Japan’s biggest pop chart, with her first studio album in Japan “Listen to My Heart”. Since then, she has dropped a string of hits including “Valenti” (2003), sold a massive number of albums and rewritten history. She is believed to have paved the way for other K-pop acts to enter the Japanese market and expand their careers and fan bases.
Now, Boa, whose smash hits include No. 1 (2002), Atlantis Princess (2003), My Name (2004) and Only One (2012), is set to take the K-pop music scene by storm again with her 10th full-length album “Better”.
Marking the 20th anniversary of her debut, she has come up with an album that shows her diverse musical taste.
“I still can’t believe that 20 years have passed since my debut,” Boa said in an online press conference on December 1, the day of the album’s launch. “It feels like people around me are giving more meaning to this than I am. Gearing up for ‘Better’, I tried to keep myself more lighthearted because I was afraid I might not be able to drop it now if I also put a lot of meaning into it and made it too weighty.”
“Better”, fronted by the namesake lead single, has 11 offerings of different genres, including the groovy Temptations and the addictive Got Me Good. It also contains the singer’s self-written tracks Cloud, All That Jazz and Little Bird. She also penned the lyrics for L.O.V.E.