Music | Due-East.org

Archive for the 'Music' Category

Trying to guess the sound of Jay Chou’s new album

孙智谦 on 09 Oct 2007

Jay Chou's On The Run promotional poster

Please tell me this album won’t stink as bad as this promotional poster does.

Jay Chou is an entertainment juggernaut in Asia. He composes music, produces, acts, writes, directs…you name it, he probably does it. And up to this point, he’s for the most part delivered high-quality stuff. But I’m a little worried about his newest album, On The Run, which is scheduled to be released on November 2nd. Why am I worried? Just look at the promotional poster above…it’s got a cowboy theme. Please, for the love of all that is good, somebody tell me this is not going to be a country album.

I know, I know…don’t judge a CD by it’s promo poster, you say. I’m not. Check out this quote from his music company’s website (translated by stitchphil at jay-chou.net):

首波強打「牛仔很忙」，由熱血作詞者黃俊郎與周杰倫共同催生一個新角色：牛仔！這個牛仔很忙，很有正義感，屬於60年代美國初創時期的古董帥哥，快跟著牛仔的馬後面跑，感受杰倫式的美國鄉村民謠帶來的暢快淋漓！
The first single ‘Cowboy on the Run’, combines the talent of Jay and a long time partner, Huang Chun Lang to present a new role for Jay: A Cowboy! This busy cowboy is one full of justice, coming from the sixties in America. Just like riding on the back of the horse, the new single promises to take Jay’s take on the American Country ballad to the world.

Cheesy promotional wording aside, country music as a genre brings about as much joy to my ears as someone thumping them for two hours straight, so the phrase “Jay’s take on the American Country ballad” makes me cringe. At the same time, though, it’s Jay, so I have hope that the album won’t totally stink. He’s always done a solid job of mixing influences from different cultures to make his own unique sound, and if anybody can take a genre as obnoxious as country and make it sound pleasing to my ears, it’s definitely Jay.

Based on his previous work, I’m thinking the album will be more varied than just his take on country music, anyway. Notice that the quote above also said something about the kind of cowboy Jay is “coming from the sixties in America.” Could this album be a melding of country and sixties-era rock? Time will tell…I’m definitely hoping to hear some piano-driven rock. In his commentary on of a promotional version of his most recent single, 不能说的秘密 (Secret), he says that he was going for a British rock sound with the song and that he hopes to show his fans “a new Jay” with the single. It’s a great song, so if there’s a lot of the same “new Jay” on the new album, I think I’ll be really happy with it.

There you have it. My guess as to what the new album will sound like. Despite the references to country music and cowboys, I’m hoping there will be enough variety and classic Jay Chou creativity and talent to make the album repeat-listen-worthy. I’ll definitely be reserving my copy over at YesAsia.com when pre-orders start on October 12th. Just please, Jay, no steel guitar, please, please, please.

Wong Fu Productions gives the coolest wedding gift ever

孙智谦 on 27 Sep 2007

Etched-glass picture frames. Candle holders. Sample bottles of crappy cologne. Gift certificates to stores you’d never shop at or activities you’d never want to try…if you’ve ever gotten married, you know some of the lameness that you can get as wedding gifts (Get ready for round two, James). But sometimes people give awesome gifts, the kind that show that the person giving them put a lot of thought and effort into their gift. The people at Wong Fu Productions gave that kind of gift to their friends Justin and Jane; I can’t think of a cooler or more thoughtful wedding gift to give someone than this. Check out the video below:

It’s [Chinese] indie rock ‘n’ roll for me

孙智谦 on 17 Aug 2007

Re-TROS (L to R): Hua Dong guitar/vocals; Liu Min, bass/vocals; and Ma Hui, drums.

It was 5:30AM, and I grumbled to myself as I usually do, irritated about how closely morning follows night five of the days of the week. Every day I’m awakened by one NPR correspondent or another talking about one news item or personal interest story or another from around the world. I normally just lie in bed for a good twenty minutes, not paying much attention to what’s actually being said but not wanting to actually get out of bed either. But today was a little different. This morning, Lisa Chow was showcasing China’s latest export: anti-establishment music. Of course, I perked up a bit.

Now I’m definitely not anti-establishment. I’m not a beatnik or an elitist, and I don’t walk around in “skinny jeans” rejecting everything mainstream and whining about how a formerly cool band sold out when they released a particular album. And I can’t stand the whole “being different for the sake of being different” scene. It’s just not me. But that’s not to say I don’t appreciate creativity and music that doesn’t sound like everything else on the planet. In fact, I rarely listen to mainstream radio because everybody sounds the same. Needless to say, I was pretty happy to hear some non-mainstream Chinese music advertised in a part of the media with such a large audience.

Since I’m not into politics (read: I hate it), this post isn’t focusing so much on the band that was featured on NPR this morning as it is focusing on Chinese indie rock itself. I first got into it when I happened upon the website for Modern Sky (China’s largest independent record label) a few years ago. Although I couldn’t read much Chinese at the time (still can’t), I managed to find a place on the site to sample the music of some of the label’s featured bands. I was impressed. In a culture where standing out from the crowd is discouraged, there was quite a bit of well-written independent music in styles varying from trip-hop to garage rock. Some of it’s really good. So I decided to look around for more Chinese indie music and found bands like Hopscotch (跳房子), InLove, Wang Fu (旺福), and Cold Fairyland, who have a very well-polished sound. And Pixeltoy, My Little Airport, and The Marshmallow Kisses definitely deserve a mention as well. There’s a large variety of great music in just those few bands, and there’s a lot more Chinese indie music that I still haven’t explored, so I’m likely to find a lot more to love.

If you’d like to check out Chinese indie music yourself but are worried you won’t understand any of it because you’re monolingual, you can rest easy. You don’t always have to speak Chinese to appreciate a lot of the indie rock coming out of China; some of the better bands like Hopscotch (跳房子) and My Little Airport actually write a lot of their lyrics in English. You can find their music and lots more on Last.FM. Most of the Chinese bands I listen to are bands I found on that site. It’s actually a great resource for finding new music in any genre.

While NPR is just one media outlet, and the majority of the world has never heard much of today’s independent Chinese music, it’s still encouraging to hear Chinese bands featured in their articles because it could potentially lead a lot of exposure for hard working artists. Who knows where that kind of coverage could lead? Maybe some of these bands will play Nashville some day…yeah, probably not.

Train wrecks and Chinese kisses

孙智谦 on 14 Aug 2007

I was surfing Youtube yesterday and came across a great music video by a Chinese singer named Michael Wong (光良). It’s very sweet in its sentiment, and the song is nice, too, if you like romantic ballads. But about 2:45 into the video, there’s a kissing scene so awkward that it almost made me shudder. It’s a really bad kiss. It looks more like two trains colliding or like they’re engaging in some kind of facial shoving contest rather than kissing, and it’s about the most un-romantic thing I’ve ever seen (and I’m not talking about the fact that her nose starts bleeding during their kiss). Some people just aren’t good kissers, I suppose.

But when I think back to all of the Chinese movies I’ve watched over the years, I can’t recall a single good kiss in any of them. Pretty much all of the kisses I’ve seen in Chinese movies are of the clumsy face-crash sort. But I’m not sure why that is. I know that Chinese culture isn’t big on public displays of affection, so maybe it’s just that no matter how good the actors and actresses are, they just can’t get past the cultural taboo of kissing in front of dozens of people when they’re filming a kissing scene. Despite the fact that I haven’t seen one good kiss in a Chinese movie, I tend to highly doubt that an entire culture of people would be bad at kissing. That sounds too much like a generalization or stereotype to make me comfortable. So there has to be some other explanation for this.

I’ve never kissed a Chinese girl, and I’m not Chinese, so I can’t comment on the ugly on-screen kiss phenomenon and whether it reflects real-life kisses. Maybe someone reading this blog can help enlighten me. If you have a good idea as to why all on-screen kisses in Chinese movies stink (or if you know of a good one in a particular movie), let me know by posting a comment.

Spotlight on 旺福 (Wang Fu)

孙智谦 on 07 Aug 2007

I love this band’s sound so much that I thought I’d introduce my readership [of 4 people] to them. This is 旺福 (Wang Fu/Won Fu), a Taiwanese band whose sound ranges from a sort of big band/swing sound to a 50s/60s rock sound to a modern rock sound to (strangely) a sort of kids-party-songs kind of sound. They’re a lot more versatile than most of the American bands out there these days. And they’re solid musicians, too. A lot of modern bands just stick to straight power chords and 1-4-5 arrangements, but they seem to use lots of jazz chords and make more complicated arrangements. The vast majority of their songs have ridiculously catchy tunes, which is great except when you don’t know the words to the songs and get them stuck in your head. That’s what happens to me all the time, and misery loves company, so I thought I’d introduce them here.

They have 2 albums, 同名专辑 (Tong Ming Zhuan Ji) and 旺福志 (Wang Fu Zhi). Both are excellent, and while I think 同名专辑 has more good songs on it, 旺福志 is well worth buying. If I can find some good mp3s of their songs, I’ll post them. Until then, try watching the video below. You’ll notice the singer in the picture (in the turquoise) isn’t the same girl singing in the video. The girl in the video has left the band because she and the guitarist broke up (or at least that’s what I’ve heard).

Sometimes you find great music in bizarre places…

孙智谦 on 19 Jul 2007

Ok, this one technically isn’t Chinese-related since the piano isn’t a Chinese instrument and there are no lyrics to this song, but I don’t care because it’s a great piano piece that happens to be in a Chinese movie, and I’m rather in love with the piano as an instrument. In fact, if it were possible to marry a piano, I probably would.

It’s a scene from a Chinese movie called 十分爱 (which is nothing like its English title. The Chinese means “complete love” or something similar, but the English title is “Love Is Not All Around”). I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I probably will, even though Kozo at LoveHKFilm.com gave it a crappy review. The actor playing the piece is also a musician/singer, so he may have written it himself. Anyway, the piece is very moving, but short. I wish there were more to it.

Jay Chou’s 聼媽媽的話

孙智谦 on 11 Jul 2007

This is a great song by a Taiwanese artist named Jay Chou (周杰倫). The song is called “Ting Mama de Hua” (聼媽媽的話), or “Listen to What Mama Says”. It’s a great little song, not at all typical of rap music (in the West, at least). I’m not a huge fan of rap as a genre of music, but sometimes you find yourself listening to things in a foreign language more than you do in your native language because if you don’t know the words, you can’t be offended or irritated, right? So I looked up the words to this one and found an English translation, and the lyrics are actually pretty touching and wise. Click here for the lyrics in Chinese characters, pinyin, and English. Enjoy!

Link to the song’s lyrics for those who are too lazy to read the paragraph above

A rare moment when reality TV is worth a darn (darn = 0.01 cent)

孙智谦 on 10 Jul 2007

My friend who’s also learning Chinese sent me these two videos a few minutes ago, and I thought I’d post links to them here mainly because it’s amazing how much difference it can make when a singer is passionate about a song versus when the person is not. Now, I’m a big fan of Stefanie Sun (孙燕姿) over all (not particularly this song), but this amateur from a Taiwanese version of American Idol blows her out of the water with his version of this song.

Here’s the original version of the song with music video, which appears to be about an obsessive, wannabe-Riverdancer fan of hers getting dumped by her boyfriend for being a weirdo:

And here’s Yang Zong Wei’s (杨宗纬) version. He puts a lot more into it, I think, as is evident by all the crying girls. Whether you like the song or style of music or not, you have to admire how well he sings the song. Just try to ignore the fact that he looks like he’s trying to pass a kidney stone while he sings.

P.S. - Will somebody please kill off “reality television” once and for all?!

Avril Lavigne: killing my opinion of Canadians since 2007.

孙智谦 on 16 Jun 2007

I can’t believe we’re exporting this garbage to other countries.

I came across a video on YouTube earlier that really grates on my nerves. It’s Avril Lavigne trying to sing her song “Girlfriend” in Chinese, and it’s bad. Really bad. Her accent is kind of almost good, but at the same time still really, really bad. There are other videos of her covering the song in other languages, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch any of them because this one was just too painful. She obviously couldn’t sing the lines all in one take, so they had to perform some [not-so] creative editing to get her words to fit with the song, and the result is a really choppy vocal “performance” in which she sounds like a drunk, stuttering computer. Did I mention that it’s bad? Now, Chinese isn’t the easiest language to speak, but it’s not hard to sing in Chinese because you don’t have to worry about tones. I just can’t believe that someone would actually sign-off on this version of the song and say, “Yep, that’s what I want people to hear from me in that foreign country.”

Normally I would be much kinder about this kind of thing in the interests of building people up and being positive, but the song’s vulgar, too, so I feel justified totally bashing it. Any song that says “mother f***ing” in it shouldn’t be translated in any way into any other language. Granted, only the chorus of the song is actually sung in Chinese, but that doesn’t make it any less crappy to send it overseas. Couldn’t they have picked a non-profanity-spewing song to dub into other languages? I just think it’s really, really trashy for your one foray into a foreign culture to come along with that phrase. And she’s married, anyway, so why does she need to sing a stupid song like this?

Should you choose to watch the video, you can safely stop at about 25 seconds and see what I’m talking about before any English (and then profanity) comes in…that is, if you can make it that far before it grates on your nerves so much that you stab pencils into your ears.

Link to crappy video. Feel free not to watch it.

inLove Live @ Zheng Shing

孙智谦 on 07 Jun 2007

This is pretty cool. Back in January, I wrote a post about an extremely talented Chinese band called inLove. I just found a comment today on my post about the Miss Universe pageant from someone purporting to be the singer of the band, Lu. I’m not sure if I believe she is who she says she is or not, but I don’t know why anybody would lie about it. (Lu, if you’re reading this, send me a pic of yourself or something with my website visible on the monitor behind you in the background so I can know if it’s really you. If so, you’ll have a fan forever. Well, you’ve got that anyway, but I’d really appreciate it!

My e-mail is Chris-AT-due-east.org)…Anyway, that comment got me looking them up on YouTube, and I came across this video linked below. It’s a great song, so check it out.

YouTube Video.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

Due-East.org

Musings on Things Asian