TRICK was released in January 2009, about a year after the incident.
If you look at it as a whole, you'd just say it's an album about delivering a show and it's her trick to gain all the attention, just like she's singing in the intro of the album and like the main promotion song show girl suggests.
Like she wants to deviate from what happened the year before, just doing her job, going on with her life.
I took it like that at first as well and in a sense it also is like that, though it always did strike me a bit odd, that she did a magic show as release event, where things are an illusion of how they really are. Or how the visuals are done with one part her being a clown and the other herself, being dressed for a show/circus/vaudeville show, where trick doesn't fit.
Now after Gubsi mentioning to me, how you can feel her struggle in the album, it suddenly struck me.
If you take a closer look at the lyrics and how the songs are placed, you can take it as a statement about the scandal and her feelings in it.
After the intro it goes on with TABOO, where she's inviting you "to things you've never seen before", showing things and sides that are taboo and can only be showed at night - or as part of a show on stage, cause it's not real.
She's even asking, it it's a mistake or an illusion and which side you like in the song. It's about discovering.
It goes on with show girl, a song about Kuu being the show girl.
You wouldn't expect it, but the lyrics are quite deep.
The important point is, that she's singing about being a "rumoured show girl" with all those "rumoured methods" she uses to capture the audience.
When she's putting on a show, she's the show girl, the confident woman, but there's a "secret behind her veil" and "If you extend your hands, it'll feel like you can reach it, but you can't", cause it's just an illusion.
And an ever on-going struggle.
The show girl is just an illusion, cause that's not all she is.
If you meet Kuu outside of her show, she's standing before you as a normal person, not as the show girl. And the public, the audience thinks they know, who she is, but in reality, they don't know, that's why she is the "rumoured show girl".
In the next songs she's singing about "abusings of the pasts" (Your Love) and the first time in the album about things she regrets having done (stay with me).
Then there comes This is not a love song, a song about that she "can't heal yet", "no matter how much she sings". It is a song about the love to a man, but the words she uses are strikingly fitting for her situation at that time. And compared to the songs before and after very aggressive in tone. Driving next is about heading to an unknown destination, just starting to move and she's asking the passenger (us!) to just go with her.
Sitting here in the middle of the album at that point gives it a really pleading character, quite strong! She wants to go on, but she doesn't know where it's going to lead or where to go, just that she's not sitting alone in her career car.
Then there are the two collabos lumped together. I don't really see a correlation in the lyrics - they're collabos and I guess she is grateful for the support (That Ain't Cool was a birthday present from Fergie after all), so she put them on the album and just put them together in the middle.
But that does mean you can directly go from Driving to Hurry Up!.
A song about being betrayed by someone you don't know well, but had a good time together. She's directly singing "her efforts came to nothing" and being impatient about how to go on.
Moon Crying after that was the first single, the first release, after the scandal. A heart-wrenching ballad as a main song for a summer sinlge! And it's another song about remorse, about regretting doing something. On first glance it's a song about love, but you can interpret the you she's talking to as the audience. Or maybe even her old self? And it's another song where she's directly singing about, well, singing. It's very present in the whole album.
JTWYA now being about her best friends, she accepts as they are and who are always on her side. She even had her real female friends in the PV for it. So her real friends, who supported her all through that bad time after the scandal, are the topic of the song. At this point it could also mean she's accepting that side of her, who made that reckless remark, too. Like she concludes the song with "I should just walk as myself" and before mentioning "Yeah, today I'll turn forward".
And only now, after all that up and down of feelings through the whole album, we have her first very typical happy and uplifting "be yourself" Kuu pop song!
One line gets back to the show girl theme again:
"Bluffing, yeah, isn't a bad thing
Everyone gets stronger that way".
It's her stage she can be confident on, the illusion she was able to take on for that hard time, forgetting that there was the scandal present around her every time she stepped down the stage.
But also the illusion that she just can be who she is in public.
The album finishes with a good feeling, with her words of love.
"I'll sing the words of love"... "to a tomorrow overflowing with joy".
So she's ending with hope that it will change again.
I seriously had my problems with the album. I still have honestly, it feels pretty disconnected and scattered to me, but that's because it is. All those different feelings scrammed together without a proper direction (she could have lumped together all ballads and all aggressive rockier songs e.g.).
She pretty much always did that with her albums, which is why I didn't thought too much about it first. But when Gubis mentioned, how conflicted he felt she still was in the album, just then I was able to see it. I mean I expected it with the first singles, but not a year after with the full album.
Like she starts with in show girl: "Up & down emotion, they won't stop".
For the night you attend the show.
For the time you listen to the album.
For Kuu at that time.
The visuals fit to that. Kuu is depicted one person doing the whole circus/the show. I mean, she is a solo artist and you can take it just as a symbol for that, but they could have easily shown some audience or other artists in the album shoot. Or real animals.
They didn't. She is all alone.
The clown costume is just a cover. The make up has a tear on one side for symbolizing both sides of life like usual for a clown and most probably also that sadness was part of her daily life back then.
So there's the illusion, the trick, capturing the attention, but not giving everyhing and also not receiving everything there is.
Cause it never is the whole reality and it is an illusion to think it is.