Battle of the B-Sides:: BoA: Start Over

 This one is for my personal indulgences, because I wanted something first gen and I wanted something fairly recent. So, I'm going with Queen BoA, all hail the queen. The song does turn five this year, so it's not completely recent, but she's also got her 25th anniversary this year and I'm hoping she releases something for that. She also debuted at the age of thirteen, but we're not going to talk about that because then I'll be a little too filled with The Rage on her behalf and these are supposed to be not-rage-filled moments.

This song comes from BoA's tenth studio album, Better, released in 2020 to mark her twentieth anniversary. Eleven tracks, of which Start Over is the ninth, for a total of thirty-eight minutes. Produced by SM the Dude and Marcus Andersson (who has produced for LE SSERAFIM, ILLIT, Demi Levato, and VCHA, among others) and written by Lee Seu Ran (who has written for BTS, TxT, IVE, Everglow, NCT, Super Junior, and GOT7, among others), Rosi Golan (who has written for Christina Aguilera, Little Big Town, and mostly herself, among others), Mick Coogan (who has written for Bad Bunny, 5 Seconds of Summer, and Imagine Dragons, among others), and Riley Biederer (who has written for JORDY, Eric Nam, and Jesse McCartney, among others), it's got a decent pedigree. Plus, it was named best K-Pop B-Side from 2020 by MTV. So that's pretty cool.

You're unfortunately not going to be getting a lot of outside performances for this one. I could essentially only find a few fancams of it from October 2024, which means this is probably going to be a little shorter than usual.

And in an unusual set of moves for me, which matches the shorter length, I'm going to talk about the lyrics. And obviously, I'm relying on a translation because my Korean isn't good enough yet, but that's why I started learning Korean, so I wouldn't have to rely on a translation. Sorry, sidetracked.

"I pretend not to care on purpose
  I pretend not to have any emotions
  I can’t hide this anymore"

Now, I thought initially that this was to make this a sort of "you'll miss me when I'm gone" kind of song. The kind where the protagonist realizes their worth and leaves the partner that doesn't appreciate them. I love those songs best. But then we get down to this part.

"Your eyes that have a different color than mine
  I can’t take my eyes off of them for even a moment
  The words you whispered were so sweet
  I want to be colored by you"

That clearly is not the kind of song I thought it was. Still in the love song genre, but now it's a different kind of realization, the kind of realization where the protagonist discovers exactly how much they care, and how much they stop caring about worrying about whether or not the other person does. There's still a sense of self-love, but in this kind of song, it's the kind of self-love where you decide to stop torturing yourself and take that leap, for better or worse. 

"I am going to start again
I’ve erased myself inside the closed emotions
My heart flutters, our breaths touch
I may have been meant to love you from the start"

Freedom. That's what this song is about. Freeing yourself from the shackles of fear and accepting the emotions you've either been hiding or hiding behind.

There's a sweetness to BoA's voice that matches this so well. Her voice is strong, supported, and bold, but here she doesn't use that to its fullest. Instead she allows the softness to temper her force. It's actually pretty cute.

I really kind of love that she is making sure you know she's singing live. I don't know if that's on purpose. I don't know at what point this is in the concert. Not a clue. I know nothing. But it also sounds like she occasionally gets a little choked up singing this song. It doesn't stop her from blasting that voice of hers once or twice though.