[Review] BoA - Disturbance

Vocals: 8 / 10

We recently talked about BoA and how her voice is accurately suited for pop music, and while this is much softer than the usual (lighter than even “Only One”) BoA still sounds great. That being said, the melody throughout is pretty ordinary, and the only exciting stuff like head voice loops and such don’t occur until later. Because it’s not as heavy as other songs, the verses seemed pretty boring but at least built up to the better stuff at the end. I cannot stand the filtered / muffled voice at the end of each chorus (save the last). It just sounds awful no matter what voice it is and I’d much prefer heavy autotune (okay I wouldn’t but still).

Appearance: 9 / 10

BoA, BoA, BoA~ You are apparently 26, but it seems once you reached 20 you just sort of stopped aging. Forever youthful. I do think the hair for solo shots frames her face a little awkwardly, but it’s nothing awful at all. Maybe it was the angles because at other points I thought it looked okay. I was definitely a much bigger fan of the pulled back bun style, which really brought out her eye smiles. Taemin’s appearance had me completely fooled with the teaser image…I had no idea it was him until pointed out. So yay? Taemin has never really looked his age to begin with.

Music Video: 9 / 10

S.M. decided to let BoA and Taemin outside of the expensive intricate boxes out into the (fake) real world! They should be honored. Praise everything holy. The interactive ending was a cheeky, but by definition “new” idea since no other music videos have ever used this approach (or maybe they have but are unpopular enough to never have been noticed). What prevents this from getting full marks though, is the solo shots. There is around 2% variation in the facial expression from BoA. It’s an almost stoic look that does not change but puts out really nice vocals. I understand it’s mainly pure emotion, but that is not a legitimate excuse. Considering BoA is a veteran entering 13th year, this was quite disappointing.

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Overall: 84 / 100

Not bad, BoA. You throw your voice around quite nicely, and the acting is of course standard for the relationship / relationship breaking sequences throughout the music video, which does not comprise of boxes, presumably due to the lack of any choreography. Regardless, it’s a good listen and the interactive choice ending is cute even if it’ll probably be the last we’ll see of it.

Note: As you may have noticed, I decided to bump the overall scores to out of 100, which helps even out the field, which I have already reapplied to past reviews. Specific categories will remain out of 10 but this benefits the scale, which will also be used for future album reviews.