1. Kissing You
2. Sparkling
3. Joyful Smile
4. Kissing You (instrumental)
5. Sparkling (instrumental)
6. Joyful Smile (instrumental)

If you’ve payed any attention to my album reviews, you’ll probably have realised that I love sugary-borderline-cheesy pop and hate it when a ballad ends an album. Kissing You is a happy, sugary song so you can expect me to enjoy it a lot. BoA’s voice suits this song perfectly and the instrumentation is pretty odd, in a good way, there’s irregular percussion and Mario type ‘bop‘ sounds here and there, which makes the instrumental pretty interesting to listen to. Kissing You is a very sweet, bouncy track with just enough unusual elements and ideas to make it far more substantial than generic sugary pop song.

Track Rating; A-

Sparkling follows Kissing You by slowing down the intro and letting BoA put in a great vocal. When the music speeds up and BoA doesn’t it reminds me very much of Steps, which is an odd flashback I’ll tell you. I love the chorus, it just feels pretty and the English lyrics are great. ‘Every me, Every you‘ while being a little bit cheesy, and entirely non-sensical, just works somehow. I think Sparkling is my favourite out of all the tracks on Vivid.

Track Rating; A

Joyful Smile starts with a great clap+guitar combination before introducing a steady drum beat. Joyful Smile is a little less energetic and slightly less sugary than the previous two tracks and doesn’t really hold my interest as much as most of the track is just clap+guitar with a little bit of a drum beat. It’s good, just has a bit less to offer than Kissing You and Sparkling.

Track Rating; B

Single Rating; A-

P.S; An entire single of happy, sugary, semi-cheesy pop songs? Get in!