Again, the Japanese pressed CDs of Mai Kuraki don’t come cheap. Three times the price of a normal disc. HMV Singapore charges me the price of one English CD as shipping fees. I guess it is sort of fair. If only I could read Japanese and order online instead. Pondered in front of the counter for just a moment, I grabbed one copy. The truth is, quite a few times I hesitated for too long (it could well be less than 24 hours) and the stock was gone. And I had quite a tough time trying to hunt for them.
Onto her 8th album, “touch Me!” entered the chart at the #1 position, after three misses from her previous albums. If you like her sensual and light R&B kind of voice, well, she sounds pretty much the same as before. Had “touch Me!” stopped at the 10th track, that would have been much better. I love the oldie “Top of the World”. Just not sure if I like Mai Kuraki’s rendition. And the 12th track is a remix of track 4 that is a bit too dreamy to my liking.
The good news is, if you ignore the last 2 tracks, “touch Me!” does have a good mix of fast and slow pace, mostly catchy. My favorite track would be “Break the Tone” and “Catch”. Fans would love this new album, I bet.
2 replies on “Mai Kuraki (倉木麻衣) – touch Me! – Odd Song Choices Aside, A Decent Effort Nonetheless”
well,i like a lot of this album,top of the world is like a breeze sweet and fresh,but i also enjoyed touch me,i really like,all cd is good,her musics are sweet.
Agatha – I only have her 5th album “Fuse of Love” onwards and i wish I could listen to some of her older works (Japanese CDs are kind of hard to get and are very expensive in this part of the world).
I like the song “Top of the World” too, especially the original. Just that mixing oldies with J-pop seems a bit odd for me … ha ha ha.
But I like her nonetheless.