Artist: Various Artists
Album/Single: It Started With A Kiss OST (惡作劇之吻)
Release Date: October 21, 2005

Note: Once again, I think Chinese is too hard to translate, so I’m leaving it untranslated (unless it was written in English).

1. Dream Waltz
The album begins, not with the theme song, but a cute little waltz tune that was played throughout the show. It’s mostly a piano solo with the support of a string section. It’s played in a very detached manner, giving it a cute atmosphere. It does repeat a few times, but there are variations underlying the main theme.

2. Say U Love Me (Jason & Lara)
Now getting into the vocal work, this is the opening of the series. There’s a certain charm to this song that makes it very enjoyable to listen to. Lara sounds like a kid in her passages which can be kind of annoying, but she does a decent job with her parts. Jason mostly raps, but he does have some singing roles (and man, does he have a low voice), but he does a good job switching between the two to bring together the song. It provides a very laidback style, but it gives serves well as the series themesong.

3. 遇到 (方雅賢 – Fang Ya Xian)
The first of two songs from this vocalist, and I think it’s the better of the two. I find the vocalist lacks tone and she could use more vibrato in a song like this. It’s a very nice ballad however. The accompaniment is very gentle and lovely. The verses flow well into each chorus, and the chorus ends off well. It’s a very sweet song, and establishes helps establish the type of OST this will turn out to be very early on.

4. 愛情海 (葉慶龍)
This guy sings quite well, and carries through nicely for the most part. He has a very warm vibrato and really brings out the character of the song in a very natural way. I don’t really like the song that much though. Although it’s a decent song, it unfortunately sounds like any generic C-pop ballad out there, and the accompaniment has some random sounds from the programming, that sort of ruin the nice mood established by the vocalist.

5. 聼見 (方雅賢 – Fang Ya Xian)
The vocalist from Track 3 makes an earlier reappearance, but doesn’t provide a very good follow up. I find this song highlights her weak vocals even more so this time around. The melody has many more leaps and movement, and she has a hard time nailing them. The song itself isn’t that tasteful either. The accompaniment is a little light playful thing, and doesn’t do well with the overly dramatic mood they tried to establish here. Speaking of dramatic, the whole song gets really annoying because they really did try for something so ridiculously dramatic that it sounds more cheesy than anything else, then put together with her weak vocals, it just didn’t turn out as emotional as it needed to be.

6. Say U Love Me (Guitar Version)
This is the theme song with a cute twist put to it. It surprisingly made for a good guitar solo song.

7. 靠近一點點 (Lara)
Lara is back, and actually, she does sound like a kid. She has a very light voice, but without all the layering this time, she sort of has a pleasant (but cute!) voice. She doesn’t carry through well though, and she sings in a very unsupported way. The song suits her voice well and with better technique, it would have turned out better.

8. 能不能 (Jason & Landy Wen)
Funny, I don’t really remember this song being played in the series. I really love Jason’s voice for some reason. It has a very soothing tone to it. Once again, I like how he incorporates his singing and rapping (though his singing isn’t the strongest). Landy sings her parts decently and gets the job done, but I think Jason once again is the highlight of the song. Jason really feels the rhythms of the song, so in comparison, Landy tends to sound like she’s simply singing her part, and doesn’t seem to be trying very actively to work herself into the song.

9. 全世界的人都知道 (王俞勻)
I really like the keyboard part in the opening of this song. It’s very gentle and nice. The vocalist, like many of the vocalists on this album, has very little support and fairly weak vocals. She sings with a very light, airy voice, which makes her strange in the higher register, and makes her lower range sound breathy and weak. This is a good ballad musically, and keeps the cute sound this album has carried throughout.

10. 和平世界 (guitar version)
I like the Latin-flavour of this song. It has a very laidback feeling to it, and not nearly as short as the previous two instrumental tracks.

11. 後悔 (何書宇)
This song was a little overplayed in the drama itself, so I don’t like it much, plus it has the typical overdramatic C-pop sound to it too. It is better than “聼見” though not by a lot. The vocalist doesn’t have the best voice, but he’s not as unsupported as most of the other vocalists that have already sang. Even though the song is dramatic as well, I can’t help but like the choruses. The verses are pretty dull, but lead well into the emotional chorus, and I think the vocalist does a pretty job of capturing the mood.

12. 惡作劇 (王藍茵)
I really, really like this ending theme. It stays along the lines of the cute mid-tempo ballad stuff that was predominant in album, but it’s much more pleasant I find. The vocalist isn’t amazing, but she sounds like she has the most control over her voice out of all the female vocalists featured here. To make up for her lack of vocal ability, she performs with attention and presents the song. Had she worked on her singing (adding in vibrato here and there), it would have turned out really nicely. The key change seems to come out of nowhere towards the end, but it’s the highlight of the song and the vocalist tries to pour more emotion and power there.

13. Sky (葉慶龍)
I don’t really like this as the closing track of the album, because it’s too much like the rest of the album, so there’s not much to make it stand out. It is sung entirely in English though, and as a treat, it’s by the best vocalist on this album. His English is quite good too. He does a good job with this song as well, but he has too many melismas everywhere, so it kind of takes away from the song quite a bit.

Overall -
Favourite Track: 惡作劇, Sky
For an OST, this turned out to a surprisingly good pop album. A little more variety wouldn’t hurt, but it was a solid album nonetheless, considering it was just a collection of the themes and insert songs from the drama. I was impressed with the vocalists featured on this album, save for one person, but most of them got the job done at the very least, decently.