BoA Has Nothing to Apologize For
Recently, BoA has leaned into her artistic instincts and abandoned a desire to create hits. The results are the most satisfying - and surprising - of her career. SM ENTERTAINMENT
In late 2022, Kwon BoA made a fiery comeback with “Forgive Me”, a song where the singer declared she’s not looking for anyone’s forgiveness. The track, which she wrote, casts the singer as a woman fed up with being misunderstood. “I won’t say sorry/ I don’t feel sorry/ How about you just hate me?” she dares in the song.
“When I wrote the lyrics I was really mad,” she said on a VLive broadcast. “Come to think of it, I was wondering whether I’ve ever expressed my rage before. That was something I haven’t done in the past 20 years.”
“Forgive Me” could be heard from the point of view of a scorned lover, but I think BoA’s rage is directed towards a patriarchal system that has made so little space for women like her. At 36 years-old, BoA is one of the last standing women approaching 40 in K-Pop. As always, she’s remained a trailblazer, but the downside of being the first is that you’re nearly always alone.
But on “Dancing Queens on the Road”, airing now in Korea, there are at least four other women who can relate to the strange space BoA finds herself in. On the show, BoA bonds and performs with Hwasa (of Mamamoo), Kim Wansu, Uhm Jung Hwa, and Lee Hyori. Throughout the series, the women perform both their own songs and cover each other’s music, which pushes them into new styles. But what is most revealing is the conversations between the women.
“I never knew I’d be a singer this long,” BoA admitted in one conversation. All the idols she debuted with, she explained, are no longer working in K-Pop. “I thought I’d do this for five years and then quit.” But then she admitted something startling. “When I was 29 I felt so weird,” she said. “When I turned 30, I had no idea what to do as a female singer. I thought about that so much. The female singers who were active in my time were no longer active. The toughest time of my life was when I turned 30 as a female singer.”
Then her lips curled into a mischievous smile. “But now I am going to be 40 soon.”
BoA has always felt older than her age. As a 14-year-old teenager arriving in Japan in 2002, she was largely left to take care of herself. From the moment she stepped off the plane from Korea, BoA navigated herself to her new apartment and, then, taught herself Japanese. BoA’s parents didn’t join her in Japan, so her managers did the best they could to help the teen grow up.
"BoA's manager always gifted her books,” Hyori remembered on “Dancing Queens”. “On an empty page, he would even write a letter."
"I read them all. I wasn't able to attend school, and I didn't want to seem uneducated,” BoA said. “I didn't like that adults treated me like I was so much younger.”
By the time BoA was 25, she had debuted in three counties, and counted America as her hardest stretch in her career. She was one of the most accomplished singers in Korean history, but that would be, as she recounted several times, the loneliest stretch of her life.
When she reached twenty years in the industry at 33 years-old, SM held a summer-long celebration for the singer. BoA had been appointed Creative Director at the company, which gave her almost full creative freedom, and she was an inspiration for many of SM’s younger idols. To celebrate her 20th anniversary, artists like Baekhyun and Red Velvet reinterpreted her greatest hits for a new generation with new recordings. On her debut day, all SM artists recorded videos congratulating her.
BoA began to speak her mind by the time she reached her thirties. With her growing influence at SM, the singer was able to direct and write her own music. While she’s an accomplished singer, her songwriting has largely gone unnoticed, even though to-date BoA has written 73 songs. Her latest releases have almost all been exclusively written by the singer. BoA’s last two albums, “Better” and “Forgive Me”, display the singer’s fearlessness to speak her mind. On “Forgive Me” particularly, BoA has chosen to portray herself as powerful and assertive without seeming cartoonish.
Yet there is a dichotomy between the hard-won wisdom BoA possesses today, which has enabled her to make her richest music yet, and the vapid music she is expected to make to remain relevant on the charts. Rather than reconcile these two polarities, BoA has begun to wave a metaphorical middle finger up.
An alternate, kaleidoscope view of BoA’s career can be seen in BoA’s performance of Uhm Jung Hwa’s 1998 hit song “Invitation” on “Dancing Queens on the Road”. For this stage, BoA styled her hair in a tight ponytail, wore a slim black dress with slits cut on either side to the thigh. “Invitation” is one of the most mature, and seductive songs BoA has ever performed, and she was candid on the show that she was nervous.
The lyrics, even by today’s standards, are eyebrow raising: “Narrowly erotic/ To make you come into my arms,” BoA sang as she lightly fanned her face. “With this heart, with this smile, with these eyes, with this touch/ I’ll seduce you tonight.” Part of the brilliance of BoA’s performance is her restraint. She is known for her intense choreography and biting lyrics, but here, BoA withholds that fire. Her movements, soft and sensual, embody a femininity that perhaps BoA has not been given a chance to show while at SM. “Invitation” is more provocative than any concept BoA has performed because it portrays female sexuality with agency.
Even within some constraints, BoA has never stopped challenging herself and experimenting with new genres, though. The past year has been thrilling to see her experiment with so many new styles. It’s worth noting that in addition to “Forgive Me”, in 2022 BoA released a near-perfect Japanese album, “The Greatest”, that reinterpreted some of her best known hits into music that sounded closer to jazz than anything in mainstream J-Pop. BoA’s career high is nestled on this album with “LOVE LETTER”, a piano-accompanied ballad that slowly adds strings until BoA’s soprano vocals reach the stratosphere. Like with “Invitation”, on “LOVE LETTER”, BoA sounds not like the pop star we’ve known for 20 years, but instead like a woman who’s chosen to throw away the well-worn playbook of hit-making and, instead, rely on her greatest asset: Her instincts.
