Fusion Band
After being inactive for half a year, Fusion will be back with a second album. When asked why the long absence, their company said that they’ve been concentrating on their next album which is reaching the end stages of its production. Now they’ll be starting performances again to warm up for their new release.
This is probably the best music news in this batch, the rest are just sad ones about company matters.
Argh I waited too long to post this…massive pileup of news. This was such a headache to all get in here.
BOBO was kept busy recently with the release of their show, NONSTOP, and celebrated their two year anniversary with the release of a new photo diary that I’ve already added to my list of goodies to buy. They also wrote loving speeches to each other.
This is a really big post, so check it out !
Chen Kun and Yuan Quan sponsor a jewelry brand in style at an event, with Yuan Quan in white riding a horse, and Chen Kun giving her a ring, like a modern day prince and princess, except that pretending to marry was really awkward for them. Normally I wouldn’t care, but it’s two actors that I like, both of which whom actually have really nice singing voices and I’ve long wished they would collaborate in something like a musical. They will be working together, but instead will be in a HK film.
Of the four promotional posters for this event (best director, actress, actor, newcomer), I decided to use the one for best newcomer, because Xu Jiao (CJ7) looks so adorable in the center
The eligible films are those where two of the following occur: the director is a Hong Kong resident, at least one film company is registered in Hong Kong, and at least six persons of the production crew are Hong Kong residents.
On April 12th, Alan’s new single River of Eternity placed first on the Oricon’s Singles Chart, successfully beating Faye Wong’s record as the most highly ranked Chinese artist on the Oricon Charts. River of Eternity is the Japanese theme song to Red Cliff, and the single includes both the Chinese and Japanese versions of the previous songs.
Alan was so happy that she shed tears of joy. At the same time, she was very humble, crediting her success to that of Red Cliff.
River of Eternity, Japanese version:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cf0RpMyoL4&fmt=18] (more…)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnPVbShxb0E]
Decided to stick the MV to this post because I didn’t want to make another entirely separate post for what is simply a commercial. It’s not Jetta’s Big Day or a masterpiece like that. Here’s some more Wei Chen for you, because the song does not show off his vocals well, despite the fact that he, along with friend Su Xing, wrote the rap, and he doesn’t get too much screentime. I would post more pics of Alan, but her fanbase in China is smaller and thus no fan-taken pics from this event.
Ding Wei at the Wind and Cloud Newcomers Awards: "You can not just rely on a pretty face"
So part of the reason I chose to post on the Wind and Cloud Newcomers Awards and spend the time to stick a bunch of MVs there, and tell you exactly which ones have composed their own songs is because you can form your own opinions on their singing ability and their compositional skills while you read to this follow up post to it.
If you watched the Awards you may not have noticed the people presenting the awards. They were older and not as good looking as the massive amount of eye-candy reaping the awards. But these people were the foundation of Chinese music, putting their heart and souls into writing beautiful music, and they must have felt uneasy seeing one by one these newcomers with pretty faces and still questionable talent going up to get awards that meant the face of Chinese music was changing from skills-based to more looks/performance-based.
Alan will continue to sing the theme song of part II of Red Cliff, Da Jiang Dong Qu. The song is based on two poems – Su Shi’s “Reflections on the Ancient Red Cliff-To the Tune of Niannujiao” and Yang Shen’s “Lin Jiang Xian.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jkiTy2knz0]
Do you like this or the first one better?
Edit: Trailer added below
Wei Chen, who is going to be one of the new F4, took a break from acting in his stage drama “Fen Dou” and Alan took a break from her flurry of single releases in Japan in order to film the MV for the song, “Jia You! You Have Me!” for the EPSON commercial that the song is for. They go back being both from Sichuan province, and having met in Shanghai for a singing competitions and are friends, and they look like it here.
I couldn’t bear to leave Wind and Cloud’s song as the first post on this blog, so here’s some real quality for everyone. Having successfully become the first mainlander to give a solo concert in Taiwan, a real step forward, Anson’s now taking it back, way way back to when China could actually be called communist without Karl Marx turning in his grave. It will be the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PROC in 2009 and Anson will be releasing an EP entitled Red Songs to coincide with this.
[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANCZ0UjEE4A"]
This particular song seems particularly popular with the masses. Hear it sung by Zong Xiaolin & alan (duet) , Han Hong, Zhang Jie, and Zha Xi Dun Zhu (very contemporized). All of them are absolutely amazing singers, and it’s a treat to hear them sing a song that allows them to show off their voices. These are all live except for the Han Hong one, since that’s an MV. It is kind of funny to hear them singing about Mao though.
Say what you will about those propaganda-filled times, but they produced some awesome music, before music became too decadent for the masses of course. Which reminds me of one I’ve been looking for a while…does anyone know what the song played during the beginning of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress was?
