chinese pop music (no hk)2006-7

does the rest of the world know about jolin (蔡依林, cai yi lin)?? everyone i know copped the bootleg weeks before the real cd dropped, then went to real stores to cop the authentic thing.

i love her because it's impossible not to and all the music is so carefully constructed and sugary sweet as fuck and so beautiful and i love telling ktv girls that they look like cai yilin.

and um... jay chou. jay chou is inescapable and i never want to see his stupid fucking face again or hear his shitty rapping. every girl in this city has a stickerphoto of her best friend and jay chou on the back of her cellphone. everyone wears shirts that just say JAY under a silhouette of his gay-ass head. i learned the local dialect's equivalent of cocksucker just so i could tell bubbly 大学生 girls that he's one when they ask me if i've ever heard of him.

crazy hoarse hiccuping singer and traditional traditional chinese instruments/melody/everything, total singalong joint. video starring singer, a darktanned bald smiley dude, as donkeycart busdriver, ferrying primary school kids in tracksuits back and forth and to adventure, while singing his song about some beautiful land (maybe) and possibly trying to fuck their teacher. so so so good and only my foreigner friends actually like it and don't tell me to fuck off when i put the vcd in.

孙小宝 (sun xiao bao), possibly the name of the guy that is possibly responsible for the 美观 song.

see if this works for 美观

http://bbs.yutian.gov.cn/UploadFile/2006-10/Y2JjamZmampjaGdkZ21obWgy.mp3

HK pop is like mainstream Asian pop. Most famous popstars, who favor boy band sounds, or Rick Astley, or Richard Marx-y sounds, are Hong Kong popstars.

Taiwanese pop is like HK pop, but less glamour, less sheen. The Taiwanese also favor Korean and Japanese influences more than HK or China. That said, there are a few big Taiwanese pop stars.

Chinese pop music--even more rough around the edges, but the indie scene, such as it is, is more refreshing and punkier and just more raw.

NB: There are clearly cultural and socio-economic biases for an Chinese(such as myself) when thinking about the difference between these different scenes.

Not that different than American pop music, as opposed to rock, indie, experimental, slacker, etc. I've yet to hear a lot of emo there, but maybe I'm not getting it.

I guess on the whole, if I were walking down the street in HK and popped into a record store, I'd hear shiny HK-pop, there just is not as much of an indie scene in HK a year ago when I was there last. China is just rawer to me--it seems like some of the bands were really just learning and experimenting (excluding the shiny China pop as well.)

But categorically, I'm sure there's some HK indie, just as there's some shiny Chinese stuff. Wong Faye comes to mind.

I actually bought an EP of some Chinese indie-rock band on a whim at Amoeba a few months back - it's actually pretty good!

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