Namie Amuro – “Sweet 19 Blues” review

Final verdict: 2/10 ★☆☆☆☆

Backed by a series of infectious singles (such as “Body Feels Exit” and “Chase the Chance”, though the rest are pretty good too), you’d assume this album would be amazing, life-changing even. Except it’s not. In fact, it’s not even mediocre – this is downright terrible.

“Sweet 19 Blues” is 19 tracks long, to symbolize the fact Amuro was to turn 19 years old at the time of its release. But the thing is, this work absolutely cannot support being that long, with half the tracks being stupid interludes crafted by Tetsuya Komuro as an attempt to prove his musical competence. That’s what I assume happened at least, since there’s really no other explanation for the fact these interludes exist in the first place – it’s not like they add much of anything to the album, if anything they disrupt the listening experience. Though if we’re being honest, it’s not like this album provides a good listening experience to begin with.

If we take a look at the actual songs, it’s not looking too bright in that sector either. The pre-released singles (which, as aforementioned, were pretty great tracks) were remixed for some idiotic reason, and the end result is not pretty at all. This mishap is mostly evident with “Body Feels Exit”, which was made into an 8-minute Latin-inspired track. Who’s listening to this stuff, seriously? They could’ve just slapped the original version of the song on there and spared themselves the effort – and also the listeners their sanity. Obviously, the same goes for the rest of the pointlessly remixed singles featured.

And as far as the album tracks go, no song is even remotely good. It’s all really bland and wildly forgettable. While it’s not grating to sit through, it is a total waste of time. Though I suppose the album songs’ apparent weakness goes to show that they picked the correct songs to be the singles, which is a plus.

In general, between Amuro’s admittedly weak (though not unlistenable) vocals, Komuro’s at times lazy songwriting and production, and whoever-the-fuck-was-in-charge’s terrible decisions regarding this record’s tracklisting, this album is not it. It has no good qualities to salvage it, it’s like they completely gave up in producing this. Don’t waste your time and listen to something else instead. The singles from this album should do, but the actual album, absolutely not.

Thankfully, this was only Amuro’s debut album (if we exclude her 1995 Eurobeat record, which I’m almost certain was a Super Monkey’s project). Only improvement could be noted, moving forward from this rather embarassing debut effort.