Kissing You is an example of a song where the context surrounding the song can really shift my perception and rating of it. I gave Kissing You a 6. It's a cute and sweet song, and in small doses I like BoA on this sound. She had done it plenty of times before with songs like Feel The Same, Easy to Be Hard, My Sweetie, Cosmic Eyes, Brand New Beat, etc. But the previous songs had the benefit of being earlier in her career, so the sounds were new and had less history attached. Or some of the songs had a little bit more going on in the production.
But in the context of a listener in 2008, the entire Vivid single felt so tired, repetitive, and safe. At the time of release, Vivid felt like the peak of my frustrations as a BoA fan. Times were ROUGH. In the golden era we would have one or two uptempos with strong dance performances, a midtempo/r&b single with some fun vocal moments and again a strong dance performance, and then a ballad. But by 2008, fans only had Lose Your Mind, Dakishimeru, and Sweet Impact as the more uptempo singles since Best of Soul. And then you add in that she stopped releasing music in Korea after Girls on Top, and it just felt like fans were PARCHED for a bop, a groove, or anything with some energy/warmth/sensuality.
I remember it being so strange to see releases from Kumi, Namie, Crystal Kay, etc in these years and all of them were releasing a good balance of uptempos/midtempos/ballads. And BoA who was such a phenomenal dancer was giving such demure~matronly~ energy on stage and in song choices.
(Of course right after this song she boomeranged into the US album which was all dance/uptempos....but unfortunately very cold, robotic, and erased any sense of her singing capabilities)
ANYWAY!!! This is all to say that I can listen to this song now, and it's just a standard faceless j-pop sweet and bubbly midtempo. But at the time of release it was very disappointing.