[article] BoA Starts New Year Poised for Another Record

[nmskalmn]

Asia-wide star BoA is starting the New year on a High Note. She is to release her fifth album in Japan on Jan. 17 and has already proved her huge popularity by coming top in the real-time ranking charts of HMV and Amazon, where customers can pre-order albums. Her fifth album titled “Made in Twenty” is the first to come out after she came of age, and fans are dying to hear what kind of music she is to offer. Already, “The prayer,” which is included on the album, is available on several websites here, and reactions have been positive. “This is something new,” one fan wrote online. “I didn’t expect this at all.”

It remains to be seen if BoA can keep up her series of record-setting releases. BoA was the first foreign singer to have four regular albums at the top of Japan’s Oricon Chart. Among Japanese singers, Ayumi Hamasaki did best with seven consecutive regular albums at the top. If BoA's fifth album does the same, she will be a step closer to the top. The album, which comes 11 months after her fourth, “Outgrow,” contains 13 songs including the previously released singles “Winter Love” and “Key of Heart.”

The Korean singer won the gold prize in the 48th Japan Record Award, the nation's most prestigious music award, on Dec. 30. She was also a headline act on Kouhaku Utagassen (literally “Red and White Song Festival”), a popular program on NHK for a fifth year running. BoA is to start her nationwide concert tour in late March.

BoA Starts New Year Poised for Another Record