hardboiled

Breaking the Glass Barrier in Music

Critiquing Hikaru Utada and BoA's arrival in the American pop industry

True representation is something that I think all Asian Americans have found in sparing amounts. Media images of us often come in caricatured form (i.e. Pokémon, the Yellow Ranger, Mulan, or Bobby Lee). Is there any hope that we might hear genuine Asian/Asian American voices in the mainstream media? The answer may lie in recent releases by two superstar Asian artists as they try to break into the US market: Utada and BoA.

Hikaru Utada is well known for her breakthrough album First Love, the best-selling album in Japanese music history, and for her Kingdom Hearts theme songs. Entirely fluent in both Japanese and English, the native New Yorker tried to break into the American music market in 2004 with her album Exodus. Unfortunately, it flopped upon release due to lack of promotion, experimental sound, and strange lyrics.

BoA’s singing and dancing abilities have made her one of Asia's most idolized pop stars. She is best known for her bubblegum dance-pop songs and ballads. Her huge success was largely possible because of her ability to learn new languages quickly and crossover from South Korea to Japan and now, to the United States.

At the core of both artists’ recent releases has been not an attempt to bring Asian music to America, but rather, an attempt to imitate American music – complete with R&B and electronic dance pop. There’s no use of Japanese or Korean. Also, in order to connect with a wider audience, these albums don’t address Asian-American themes of struggle, racism, and solidarity but dwell on typical topics like love, breakups, and girl power.

Unfortunately, the stereotype of “Asian accents” will haunt judgment of Boa’s release. This is due to the double standard and fetishism in how Americans perceive accents and decide which ones they accept. While British accents are classy and Latin accents sexy, Asian accents are seen as unattractive and at times comical, a mark of foreignness and incomprehensibility. In preparation for her debut, BoA underwent some major accent neutralization and her songs reflect an almost conscious use of heavy vocoder to electronically distort her voice à la T-Pain to make her accent less noticeable.

Utada's second English effort, This Is The One, is the most interesting music-wise, ranging from jazz/bossa-nova in "Me Muero" to acoustic R&B in “This One (Crying Like a Child)”. Utada’s lyrics remain true to what made her famous in Japan: they are quirky, funny and unusual (In “Come Back to Me”, she sings about photoshopping her memories). But be warned while listening to "Dirty Desire"; she invokes the Asian stereotype in the lyric "Love you long time", perhaps to reclaim it as her own fantasy or to make an ironic joke about her sexuality as an Asian American female. In spite of the album’s shortcomings, there's still enough risk and intrigue in it to warrant a second listen.

BoA's self-titled album sounds right at home in the club. None of her songs are ballads, a result of her slight attempt to break away from Asian music tastes and capitalize on the club market. Her lead single "Eat You Up" plays hip-hop beats with a strong bass synth, as BoA confuses her desires for a guy with her appetite in hilarious lyrics. However, while very catchy, the album does not sound terribly different from current American pop songs and her lyrics lack any poetic nuances.

Are BoA and Utada good representations of Asians and Asian Americans? That’s debatable if they forgo their artistic visions to mimic American pop-stars, as BoA has chosen to do. However, while BoA adopts a globalized pop image recycling trends of the present, Utada alters a mainstream sound to fit her artistic style, which I think makes her a more exemplary representation of Asian Americans.

BoA and Utada serve as tests for the American pop market, which may or may not be tolerant enough to embrace Asian Americans in the pop scene. Whether this is the glass ceiling for these artists remains to be seen. Still, with enough luck, promotion and willingness to present American pop with something new, Utada and BoA will break the color line of the American music industry.

Debate about Utada & BoA with Ryan at ryansadakane@gmail.com.