Dear Orange
Orange Tan Hui Tien

Uncontrolled
Namie Amuro

Johor’s Orange Tan was the women’s champion in the Malaysian version of Project Superstar back in 2007. While it has taken her a few years to produce, her first EP is the perfect showcase for her agreeably husky pipes.
The songs here have an easy-breezy feel. In them, she muses on familiar themes of life, love and friendship, while avoiding the trap of sounding hackneyed.
In the sweetly optimistic Dear Us, she sings: “Dear us, we live for love/Even if we go our separate ways today/The baggage is heavy, we have to lift it somehow/An unwrapped possibility is waiting in the future.”
Interspersed between the five songs are short interludes, including a cute recording of her niece asking if she has eaten and when she is coming home over the telephone. It is all very slice-of-life and charming.
A totally different proposition is Japanese pop queen Namie Amuro’s ninth studio album, Uncontrolled.
Slick and urbane, with polished music videos to go with 11 of the 13 tracks, it feels calculated down to the last beat.
Still, tracks such as In The Spotlight (Tokyo) and Let’s Go – with lyrics such as “It’s the idea, the idea, idea of you/It gets me going, going, it gets me going” – do the job and ought to get one moving on the dance floor.
It is on the slower-paced numbers that one seems to get a hint of Amuro, the person. Get Myself Back has her crooning: “I’ve always been acting strong/Even lying to myself/On the open white map/There isn’t a place I can go to.”
A little more Amuro, and a little less control, would have made for a more fascinating album.
(ST)