Revisiting Crystal Kay’s undeserved flop, Vivid

Crystal Kay’s tenth studio album, Vivid. Not her most popular album. Far from it. It’s probably one of her more lesser known albums. And yet, it’s a pretty significant one in her discography. Fans that know this album might be like ‘What?! That shit sold less around 5,000 copies. How is it significant!?’.

So, let’s rewind and revisit Vivid, and count the ways.

Vivid was Kay’s first album to be released on Universal, following her parting ways with Sony—who she had been signed to for 10 years, since the very start of her career at the age of 14. And with this new home came a new lease on Kay’s approach to her image and sound. But unfortunately, the catastrophic commercial performance of Vivid would lock Kay into what I can only speculate to be record label politics and a clamp down on the type of music she would record, release, and who she would work with—which explains why we ended up with albums such as Shine, For You and I Sing. Albums which felt more like Kay picking up where Spin the Music left off as opposed to where Vivid did.

Vivid was a commercial failure. So a pivot for what came next was to be expected. The music on Vivid wasn’t why the album fell out of the charts after a week and was certified tofu by the Recording Industry Association of Japan. But the music was a big part of some of the fallout which occurred upon the release.

Up until 2010, Kay was a comfort in the sense that you knew what you’re going to get from her. Kay’s thing had always been consistency and honing her craft. She wasn’t the type to just hop on different styles for the sake of it, or shift her sound on a whim. Kay was always about evolving her artistry first. Improving as a singer. Improving her approach to songs. Improving as a performer. And also working with producers and songwriters whose own artistry was evolving alongside hers. Consistency and growth is a huge part of what made Call Me Miss… and All Yours such fantastic albums. Everything about them felt refined. Earned. There was such a clear step up from Crystal Style to Call Me Miss… and then another step up from Call Me Miss… to All Yours. With these albums, Kay had reached a point with her artistry and her sound that it felt like she had been working towards for years, and she was completely owning it. These albums represented moments when Crystal Kay became CRYSTAL KAY.

But Vivid saw Kay take a very different approach.

Vivid did something Kay hadn’t really done before, which was shift her sound in a way no album of hers had done prior. She had flirted with some of the music styles on Vivid before, but had never really committed to them the way she did with Vivid. And I think this is where things started to go wrong for Kay. And the point from which we’d see her fanbase fracture, and her team learn all of the wrong lessons for everything she would release from this point onward.

Vivid is one of Crystal Kay’s most divisive albums. I remember being surprised at just how divisive this album was when it was released. Some fans were not happy. Pissed even. Even though Vivid was a huge improvement over the album I pretend does not exist, it was also a giant leap in the right direction, and an album which made sense in 2012. But fans screwing up their faces in disgust at Vivid speaks to how much of an impact that albums such as Call Me Miss… and All Yours made. Because they cemented an idea of how they always wanted Kay to be. And Kay experienced what many R&B focused artists—Black artists specifically—experience when they jump into pop.

‘She’s too pop now’.

But even before Vivid released, the singles had the fanbase split. Everybody liked “Superman”, but not everybody liked “Delicious na Kinyoubi”. But everybody loved the “Delicious na Kinyoubi” B-side, “Haru Arashi”. “Forever” had everybody silent. Then Vivid released and it just got worse.

I was genuinely surprised at the reaction the album got, because it didn’t feel like the rapid departure that I felt it got painted as. Not only did I think Vivid was a great album, but I found it refreshing to hear Kay fully expand into these different sounds and make them work in a way they didn’t for others who had attempted to do the same. Kay cashed in on reaching the apex of her R&B / pop light sound of Call Me Miss… and All Yours. So Vivid felt like her New Game+’ing her music at the time. And unlike artists who try a new sound and lose their own sound, Vivid still felt like a Crystal Kay album, albeit in a reframed form. But the reactions to the album made it really clear how many fans saw Kay and wanted to continue to see Kay. It also made it pretty clear that fans selectively forgot 4Real and Color Change!— albums where Kay went pop for a minute. But when it comes to 4Real, fans only remember “Boyfriend: Part II” and “Candy” and not “Can’t Be Stopped”. And when it comes to Color Change!, fans absolutely do not remember “Namida no Saki ni”.

Vivid created a bit of an identity crisis for Kay, and one which would plague her career for years to come—right up until the very day of me posting this. But this wasn’t the fault of the album itself. It was the expectation set by the singles and lack thereof.

It’s easy to say that Vivid flopped because it was too pop. But I really don’t think this is the sole reason why. It played a part. But the marketing in tandem with the pop shift which fans and consumers were not aware of until the album dropped, because of the single choices is what spelled disaster.

Vivid did not have a clear point of view from a marketing perspective. And this is why Vivid should have had a longer stretch of singles. The problem with the singles is that they formed an idea of what the album might sound like, just for them to not be reflective of the album at all. And it didn’t help that “Superman”, “Delicious na Kinyoubi” and “Forever” were pretty typical Kay songs. And whilst the Japanese album release model—singles recorded so far ahead of when an album is eventually put together—often results in this disconnect between the singles and what eventually becomes the album, Kay has always managed to be an exception to this. Her singles have always given some indication of the vibe of the album they’ll feature on. But with Vivid, this wasn’t the case. And this could have easily been rectified by releasing more singles. Kay has never been a ‘5–6 singles then album’ kinda gal, which is probably why she’s so light on hits. But Vivid REALLY needed an extensive singles run, to better give everybody an idea of what Vivid would be. Especially at a point in her career where she was re-introducing herself.

Were I to pick the singles, I would probably still pick “Delicious na Kinyoubi” and “Forever”. But I would have made “Haru Arashi” a double A-side with “Delicious na Kinyoubi”. I also would have released “Memory Box” (every J-bitch gotta have a ballad in her arsenal for a single), “Yo-Yo” and “Take It Outside” and made sure each of these singles had stronger product tie-ins which made sense with the song AND WERE ACTUALLY PROMOTED. It’s crazy to me that “Superman”, “Delicious na Kinyoubi” and “Haru Arashi” all had tie-ins, but there was so little trace of them actually having tie-ins.

HENNYWAY.

“Forever” should have had a football (I’m British) tie-in, because it had such a big World Cup type vibe. Or at the very least some sporting event tie-in. “Delicious na Kinyoubi” should have been a tie in with some type of candy or beverage, which Crystal would have been the face of in posters and commercials. “Haru Arashi” should have had a tie-in with getaways, holiday packages, deodorant or Uniqlo AIRism—something where Kay is just stood in some white tank top with white fabric blowing all around her or some shit. You see the vision right? Or if we wanted to be really progressive, sanitary towels would have also been a good product tie-in. “Memory Box” of course would’ve been all about a drama tie-in. “Yo-Yo” could have any type of product tie-in. “Take It Outside” would have been a great match for something like headphones / earphones.

Between these singles and the different vibes they evoke, I think it would have given fans a clearer idea of the direction of the album. Especially if the accompanying commercials and posters were also bold and colourful. It wouldn’t have changed how fans felt about Vivid. But I think it would have been less of a surprise. Whilst also reminding fans that Crystal Kay has always dabbled pretty largely in pop, despite being categorised as R&B.

Something which really started to plague Crystal Kay’s circa 2015 was this insistence of her catering to the pop market, when she wanted to do R&B. Kay often cites “Koi ni Ochitara” as the song that really pushed this to happen for her because of how big of a success it was. But with Vivid, it really did feel like Kay wanted to do pop at that particular time because she wanted to, and it made sense for the landscape of 2012 and where Kay was at in her career of wanting to be freer in her sound, her image, and break out of the template she was locked into the whole time she was at Sony. You could clearly see this in how much brighter everything became in her sound, her outfits and her music videos. The album title held true. But because of how poorly Vivid did—rather than Kay’s team evaluating why the album underperformed, everything about it was deemed the problem. And Kay’s sound descended into boring and generic, with little trace of what made many of her fans fall for her in the first place, except for her voice being on the songs. And the colour palettes of Kay’s albums went straight back to beige. Literally.

Vivid actually reminds me a lot of something Janet Jackson would do and has done—the ending of “Be Mine” sounds like something yanked straight from one of her songs. And this tracks with Kay not only being a huge Jackson fan, but working with her producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis for this exact reason. Jam & Lewis have always done a great job of giving Jackson songs which share the sonics and sensibilities of both pop and R&B, which is ideal for somebody like Kay. Jackson is a clear example of an act for whom the R&B / pop pipeline worked. And looking back on this now is timely—at a point in music where Black girls are finding themselves being locked into R&B and not given the grace to explore sounds outside of it, as though nothing else can work for them. And where Black girls are having their albums be subjected to terrible rollouts from a team of people who are supposed to know better. And I think there is something to be said with how Kay is seen as Japanese in some regards, but always being held to a different standard and expectations because of her Blackness. But that’s a whole other post.

Spin the Music is an album. But it also isn’t, and does not exist. So, when you treat Vivid as a follow up to Color Change!, it makes a lot more sense, as we were beginning to see this shift to a more pop led sound on that album. But Color Change! also wound up in the same position as Vivid, by not having enough singles. And the couple of singles it did get were not reflective of the album whatsoever. In a timeline where Color Change! had a 6 single run and Doctor Strange wiped Flash and Spin the Music out of existence, Vivid would have landed far better.

To me, Vivid is a solid album. I still play the shit out of it. I would probably rank it as one of Crystal Kay’s best, because it was an album in her discography where there was a clear push, sense of fun and boldness that I don’t think any of Kay’s other albums have had since her debut, C.L.L Crystal Lover Light. Kay was also able to be more involved in the songwriting than she had been on any of her other albums, having co-written nine out of the thirteen songs.

It’s crazy to me how this album managed to shift the entire course of Crystal Kay’s career and all for the wrong reasons. Vivid seemed to create such a narrative within her team, that when Crystal Kay tried to make a US debut happen, that she steered away from Vivid, when Vivid was exactly the type of sound she should have stuck with to make that debut work. “What We Do” and the English version of “Yo-Yo” were RIGHT there. She coulda re-recorded any of the songs from Vivid in English and had far stronger material than “Busy Doing Nothing”, “Rule Your World” and “Dum Ditty Dumb”. Girl. “Fly High” and “Come Back to Me”!?

Kay is such an easy artist to market. And Vivid was an incredibly easy album to market. Probably one of her easiest albums to market. Really pushing Vivid as a clean slate for Kay and re-introducing her to the market after a period of quiet and a Best release was the best course of action, and perhaps why leading with “Superman” (as much as I adore that song) wasn’t the best idea. Especially if you are trying to establish that Vivid as a refresh and rebrand of sorts.

I’ve always found the direction that Kay’s music and career took after Vivid to be extremely tragic, because it didn’t need to end up that (this?) way. The chart flopformance wasn’t because the music on Vivid was bad. It was because the damn thing only had three singles, which were poorly marketed. And the only marketing for the album was a truck driving around Shinjuku playing “Delicious na Kinyoubi”.

Vivid was set up for failure. So how could anybody in Kay’s team be surprised that it did? And yet her team and record label chose to glean the wrong lessons from Vivid’s failure. Resulting in this period of Kay’s music being void of any trace of Vivid or her earlier Sony releases, and not receiving any promotion at all.

We’re talking about an album released 12 years ago. And Kay probably has a different team now than she had then. But just in case she doesn’t, I’mma say it anyway.

Girl. Fire the whole management and marketing team.

Vivid deserved far better than it did.