| PrismaticTears |
8th July 2005 01:11 PM |
BoA News Article blah blah
An article about her actually popped up in Reuters:
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...PLE-BOA-DC.XML
Quote:
BoA dances past S.Korea-Japan strife to music fame
Thu Jul 7, 2005 7:15 PM ET
By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - BoA sings. She dances. She is the face used to sell Japanese cars and South Korean mobile phones.
While ties between Seoul and Tokyo drift further apart, she bridges the gap between the neighbors and racks up huge record sales in both countries.
BoA is a South Korean pop star who goes by a single name that is as well known in Tokyo -- where she has been a top-selling artist since breaking into the music world five years ago at just 13 -- as it is in Seoul.
Born Kwon Bo-A in South Korea, the waif of a teen-ager has been called a Korean Britney Spears and has outsold some of the biggest U.S. stars in Japan, the world's second-largest music market.
She may be only 18 years old, but she is on a mission.
"My goal is to become the No. 1 star in Asia," she said in an interview with Reuters.
BoA became big in Japan as a teenybopper star, repeated that success in South Korea and is now looking to break into the Chinese market, which has been quick to embrace actors and music stars who are part of the "Korean wave" of talent sweeping Asia.
Whether she sings in Japanese, Korean or Chinese, BoA's music is about the beat. It has the typical sound of Japanese pop with its synthesizer-driven melodies, splashes of R&B and hip hop, as well as oddly phrased English song titles such as "Shine We Are."
"My music is based on dance music. It is delivered with a powerful female voice and the audience can gather a lot of strength and power from it," BoA said at a recording studio in Seoul.
MAKING THE JUMP
Asia's top movie stars -- such as Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh or Zhang Ziyi -- made the jump to become global stars, but Asian music talent has not been able to cross regions so easily.
Even the biggest Asian stars, such as Japan's Hikaru Utada, a fluent English speaker whose music embraces R&B, have only had minimal to moderate success with their U.S. or European releases.
But no matter how much fame BoA attracts in the region, she would still probably pass unnoticed through streets in major U.S. and European cities.
"American and European audiences haven't had that much interest in Asian music stars," said Lee Soo-man, the head of major South Korean talent agency SM Entertainment Co. who discovered BoA.
"You would think that out of the biggest market of Asia, the biggest stars would be born. The star-making system of the world will change, eventually," he said.
BoA became the first South Korean artist to have an album top the charts in Japan, Japanese ranking agency Oricon said.
Her 2002 album "Listen to My Heart" sold more than 1.3 million copies in Japan, and her success there led to BoA building a fan base back home. Her second album Valenti also topped the Oricon charts and sold more than 1.3 million copies.
NO BACKLASH
Rhee Chul-eui, a South Korean student living in Tokyo, said BoA's success had touched his national pride.
"I was surprised to see her growing so popular so quickly in Japan. Now, I feel a sense of pride when I see her music climb the charts and see her appear in TV commercials," Rhee said.
BoA said she has not felt any backlash in Japan because of rising tensions between Tokyo and Seoul. The two countries are in the midst of a territorial row over some desolate islands, and Seoul has continued to criticize Tokyo for failing, in its view, to show proper contrition for its past militarism and its colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.
"My Japanese fans and my Korean fans are getting to know each other. The Koreans are learning Japanese by listening to my songs and Japanese are learning Korean the same way," BoA said. "I feel delighted by this."
Her face graces magazines in Korea and Japan and she was dubbed the Most Influential Artist in Asia for 2004 at an MTV Asia awards show. But critics say she has become overly managed and that her songs are more commercial product than soulful tunes.
Her management team has been pushing her music in China. Coming up later this year is the joint release of three versions of the same single -- sung in Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
"I love music and I love what I am doing. Five years from now, I'll be signing and performing somewhere," she said "Maybe it will be in Asia, maybe it will be in the United States, but I will be touring somewhere in the world."
(Additional reporting by Kim Yoo-chul)
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
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