A-Mei, Queen of C-Pop

I listen to a lot of female artists in K-Pop but my first "love" will always be A-Mei. Her Chinese name is 張惠妹 and she's been singing for 24 years. She has many famous songs. When I'm forced to sing something at karaoke in China, I usually sing one of her songs. Here is one of her latest singles:


Full Name 連名帶姓 - A-Mei 張惠妹

The song's been out for a bit over two years and has ~67 million views. The lead in the music video is Selena 任家萱, who is one of the three members of S.H.E, another famous C-Pop group.

零七年 那一首定情曲的前奏
要是依然念念不忘 太不稱頭
早放生彼此 好好過 都多久

你怎麼像標本 杵在我心裡頭
後來的那幾個 又沒做錯什麼
他們口中自私的我
犯了偷竊時間的錯 複製貼上你的愛

也很精彩的你 不甘寂寞
這圈子不太大 多少聽說
欣賞你流浪 像是種信仰
我真這麼想

再被你提起 已是連名帶姓
謊稱是友誼 卻疏遠得可以
多少人愛我 偏放不下你 是公開的秘密
只剩你沒拆穿我

再處心積慮 終究事不關己
哪來的勇氣 我就是不灰心
我且愛且走 其實在等你 是僅有的默契
你會不會又錯過 我沒有把握

算不清 多少個跨年夜一起過
要是依然念念不忘 太不稱頭
早放生彼此 好好過 都多久

你怎麼像標本 杵在我心裡頭
後來的那幾個 又沒做錯什麼
他們口中自私的我
犯了偷竊時間的錯 複製貼上你的愛…

K-pop Girl Group, Chinese Style

LOL WUT?

I saw this from an article from chinaSMACK. Cute(-ish) girls in skimpy clothing? Check. Weird dance choreography? Check. Repetitive yet nausea-inducing music and lyrics? Check. Except for the KonglishChinglish, this is just like a K-pop girl group MV.


好乐Day - Wang Rong (王蓉)

Way too much English in the lyrics. Seems like they inserted English words and phrases at random. One of the cS comments said 外国人听不懂，中国大妈听不明白，这是只属于我们这代的语言，Chinglish (Foreigners can't understand this, Chinese aunties can't comprehend this, this is our generation's language: Chinglish). I doubt many young Chinese people can understand this either.

The quality lyrics remind me of another song:


Friday - Rebecca Black

I listen to a lot of K-pop without understanding any of the lyrics. I cringe when listening to either of the above songs since I can understand English and Chinese (most of the time). Is this true for Koreans when they listen to or watch MVs from Orange Caramel or Crayon Pop?


까탈레나 (Catallena) - Orange Caramel

MV Reaction Vids

I've been noticing that when I look for K-pop music videos on YouTube, the search results include a lot of so called "reaction" videos. Basically they're videos of people watching music videos. These have to be the most ridiculous waste of bandwidth ever. I wish YouTube could tag these uploads so I can filter them out of my search results.

Maybe I should make a video of my reaction (of disgust) to watching one of these retarded reaction videos... how meta would that be!

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Not sure what I'm ranting about? Go to YouTube and type in "aoa get out mv" in the search box. About 50% of the results are useless "reaction" videos. They're mostly fake (staged) anyway.

G.E.M.

I bought a Chinese album from iTunes this morning. The artist is G.E.M. (鄧紫棋) from Shanghai though she sings songs in both Mandarin and Cantonese. The "Deluxe" version of the album comes with 2 music videos and a digital booklet, probably the CD insert. I say "probably" because the PDF file is corrupt and won't open... still dealing with iTunes store.

Here is a music video:


Oh Boy - G.E.M.

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Eh? The video link switched to another song. Weird.

I can't embed it but here's a link to the original video that I uploaded to Tumblr. Hopefully this one won't change.

Cheer Chen Live

旅行的意義 - 陳綺貞

I tried singing this song a few times at KTVs in China... couldn't read about 1/3 of the characters. :(

Jane Zhang at 2011 MAMA in Singapore

I saw Jane in concert in Pasadena several years ago.

MAMA = Mnet Asian Music Awards. Lots of Koreans since Mnet is a Korean network. Jane won in the Best Asian Artist - China category. On her bio page, Mnet screws up twice:


- Jane was born in Chengdu, China
- Taiwan is not a province of China

Sandy Lam in Concert

After attending the Jacky Cheung concert last year and enjoying it more than I thought I would, I want to go to this concert too. Unfortunately, I'll be in Portland so probably won't be able to make it to Vegas on Christmas Eve. Hotel prices are going to be crazy expensive too.

她來聽我的演唱 - Jacky Cheung 張學友

她來聽我的演唱 - Jacky Cheung 張學友

He sang this song at the concert in Las Vegas. It was one of the many songs I've never heard of... unfortunately, I only remember the title of this song and I happened to have it in my iTunes library.

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Some photos from the concert at Caesar's Palace. They were being really strict about having no photos/videos during the concert so I didn't get any good shots.


Empty stage before the concert


Colosseum at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas







Jacky sang for about 2.5 hours and had good interaction with the audience, mainly in Cantonese though. A few songs (both his and other people's) were rearranged and sounded really cool... too bad I couldn't get a recording. Maybe they'll put out a concert DVD or something.

姐妹 - 張惠妹

姐妹 - 張惠妹

This appears to be a New Year celebration concert in Taipei. Her dress is kinda goofy looking.

華麗的冒險 - 魏如昀

華麗的冒險 - 魏如昀

I think her English name is Queen Wei and she's a finalist on an "American Idol"-like TV shows in Taiwan. The song is originally by Cheer Chen (陳綺貞).

==========

Here's the original MV:


華麗的冒險 - 陳綺貞

Chinese Nobody

Nobody (Chinese) - Wonder Girls

Arg, it sounds worse than the English version. Interestingly, they didn't translate the hook "I want nobody nobody but you" into Chinese but left it in English. Is the assumption that everyone understands English? Also, they translated Yoobin's rap at the end into English instead of Chinese; the original rap was mostly in Korean. I should compare the English and Chinese version to see if the lyrics are the same.

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I still think Sunmi is prettier than the new girl Hae Lim.


Sunmi


Hae Lim

C-pop MVs

I'm still clearing out boxes at the new house. In the process, I found some Chinese pop DVDs so I ripped a few music videos and uploaded them to YouTube.


我要的選擇 [MV] - Jolin Tsai 蔡依林


謝謝讓我愛上妳 [MV] - Yang Pei-An 楊培安
From the pick guard, it looks like the guy is playing a Taylor guitar in the MV. Cool...

New Blog

I seem to only blog about three things: China, computers, and K-pop. Since I'm going to start uploading my current iPod playlist online, I'm moving C/J/K-pop MP3 posts to another blog so my 3 readers won't have to scroll through a bunch of K-pop songs.

New blog is called Asian Pop Music (how creative!) if anyone is interested.

One More...

OK, one more upload. This time a Chinese song to keep things in balance. Original song is 4:48.


原來你什麼都不要 - 張惠妹 (A-mei)

A-mei Live (on TV)

I found some live TV performances by A-mei in 1080p HD on YouTube. She just turned 37 and is still as amazing as ever. I hope I can see her perform live before she retires for good.


我要快樂 - 張惠妹


原來你什麼都不要 - 張惠妹

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Hmm, I think I found a Taiwan music show (週日狂熱夜) broadcasting in HD that features C-pop singers, much like the shows I download from Korea. Even better, they all seem to perform with a live band too.

Shanzai SNSD

Shanzai: refers to Chinese imitation and pirated brands and goods, particularly electronics. Literally "mountain village" or "mountain stronghold", the term refers to the mountain stockades of warlords or thieves, far away from official control. "Shanzhai" can also be stretched to refer to people who are lookalikes, low-quality or improved goods, as well as things done in parody.

Dang it, do the Chinese people have to copy everything?

A Chinese group very, maybe too similar to Korea's proud Girls' Generation is making headlines!

This Chinese group is called Idol Girls, and they are consisted of 9 girls. Okay, so the number of members can easily be the same, right? But that's not it. According to a Chinese site, the Idol Girls are an average of 18 years old, and are supposedly talented not only as singers, but as actresses, models, MCs and more.

Top: not SNSD
Bottom: SNSD

YouTube Account Suspension

Oh well, one of my favorite sources for K-pop music videos and performances on YouTube was just suspended. I think she created 5 (or more) accounts and almost all of them have been suspended; there's only one left and it probably won't last either. That's too bad since she just started uploading videos in 1080p. I wish the "official" accounts would put up better quality videos.

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Heh, I just checked and three videos in my YouTube account were taken down due to Avex Entertainment. I went through a lot of trouble to rip these MVs from a region 3 DVD. I'm not even sure how I did it now.

Gentle Words by Koda Kumi
COME WITH ME by Koda Kumi
Selfish by Koda Kumi


For some reason, this one is okay. Maybe they have an agreement with Avex or something.

I heard you get three strikes before your account is suspended in YouTube. My first strike was an A-mei video from a DVD I bought in Taiwan. The Koda Kumi videos were strike two. Let's hope no one finds the "illegal" Cheer Chen uploads.

阿桑

Occasionally, I go to either 搜狗 or 百度 to check out the latest Chinese pop music. I don't visit too often because both sites are in simplified Chinese and it's really hard for me to understand. Anyway, i was checking out the Top 500 Songs on Baidu and noticed that a singer named 阿桑 was in 2nd, 4th, 12th, and 13th position and I've never heard of her before. I downloaded a few MP3's and saw that she only released two albums back in 2003 and 2005... kinda odd to be still ranked so high.



The few songs I downloaded were really good so I wanted to find out more about about this singer. Since I put in her Chinese name in the search box, all the results were in Chinese. I finally found some information on Chinese Wikipedia (traditional Chinese). Scanning the article, I saw the sad news that she passed away in Taiwan less than two weeks ago due to breast cancer... she was only 34 years old. :(

千里之外 - 周杰倫

New A-Mei Music Video

如果你 也 {聽說}

I bought this CD (Star) in Chengdu last month for RMB40 (~$5.40) in a supermarket. It looked real—there was a hologram EMI sticker—but those can be faked too.

突然發現站了好久 不知道要往哪走
還不想回家的我 再多人陪只會更寂寞
許多話題關於我 就連我也有聽過
我的快樂要被認可 委屈卻沒有人訴說
夜把心洋蔥般剝落 拿掉防衛剩下什麼
為什麼脆弱時候 想你更多

如果你也聽說 有沒有想過我
像普通舊朋友 還是你依然會心疼我
好多好多的話想對你說 懸著一顆心沒著落
要怎麼附和 捨不得 又無可奈何

如果你也聽說 會不會相信我
對流言會附和 還是你知道我還是我
跌跌撞撞才明白了許多 懂我的人就你一個
想到你想起我 胸口依然溫熱

許多話題關於我 就連我也有聽過
我想我寧可都沉默 其實反而顯得做作
夜把心洋蔥般剝落 拿掉防衛剩下什麼
為什麼脆弱時候 想你更多

如果你也聽說 有沒有想過我
像普通舊朋友 還是你依然會心疼我
好多好多的話想對你說 懸著一顆心沒著落
要怎麼附和 捨不得 又無可奈何

如果你也聽說 會不會相信我
對流言會附和 還是你知道我還是我
跌跌撞撞才明白了許多 懂我的人就你一個
想到你想起我 胸口依然溫熱

如果你也聽說 有沒有想過我
像普通舊朋友 還是你依然會心疼我
跌跌撞撞才明白了許多 懂我的人就你一個
想到你想起我 胸口依然溫熱
如果你想起我 你會想到什麼