Archives For 2011

I just gotta say this is sooooooooooooo cool.

I actually like the Chinese/Taiwan music industry because so many of their artists combine classical music elements. In the case of 2CELLOS, it’s the other way around! It’s pretty kick ass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSByjqMGtaU

More info here.

This is pretty good stuff…

First contender of Breakthrough MV of 2011~

You can get more info on Cold Mailman over YAM Magazine ;P

I love when I do long and weird titles. xD

I don’t want to offend anyone — I know I’m doing my generalization, but let’s be honest~ I haven’t been into the American commercial pop scene since… I left Britney, and I left her circa her Toxic days too.

Even though people say I’m a music snob (I don’t know why…), I really like my easy-to-digest commercial pop of pretty idols that I can worship,  catchy music, and dance routines. I was big on the dancing, and I’m not talking about jiggly butt dances or Waka Waka stuff — as you know, I prefer my Shakira in her Donde Estan los Ladrones days… — I’m talking about sync dancing that gets you pumped, all the UMPH from the Nsync and Britney days of late 90s and very early 2000s.

I gave a try to the Katy Perrys, the Jonas Bros, the Justin Biebers (yes, yes I did.) — by the time Ke$ha was out, I had already given up. I didn’t even try Miley because her voice exasperates me, so I wouldn’t be able to stand her singing voice.

And then Kpop happened.

Maybe it was because I saw these Asian faces looking back at me — then again, maybe it isn’t — or maybe they put something in my kimchi (though I’m pretty sure I started eating kimchi after my Kpop thing), maybe it’s because they’re just better… who knows, but there’s something so VERY fascinating about the way Kpop is spreading.

We’ve been looking how it’s grown over the past 2 or 3 years into a phenomenon. I wonder how big is going to get, I want to see it get big… but not only Kpop, of course — other types of Asian music. I want to see how Kpopers get famous, Cpopers, — okay, not Jpopers, but definitely Jrockers, and the Taiwan music scene, and the indie Japanese scene~

So obviously, I made a playlist prompted from the Kahi post I did a day or two ago.

These are songs from from the Kpop industry that just stuck out. It’s a bit thin on the earlier years [the playlist is ordered by year], but it begins getting pretty heavy in 2008. I tried picking just songs that are dance pop and not ballads just to keep the list in check — at the moment it has 30 tracks, that I hope will expand into more songs as the months and years go by~

[iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLDD96E58EC50B1F36&hl=en_US”]

Here’s the YouTube link.

If you have any suggestions as to what it’s missing, comment away.

*EDIT*

Must include MVs (so songs released as singles), not older than late 90s.
Also… song must work as MV too. So no awesome songs but tacky videos. Sorry.

Now tell me, how did you get into Kpop?

It seems like I haven’t blogged about Yu Aoi for a while. I certainly haven’t checked her website, so I’m a little out of the loop.

The title on this post may be a little misleading. I don’t know whether Yu is in India, but the cover for GINZA Magazine for the July edition seems to indicate something similar… or maybe it will just be “India style”. Who knows~

See the bottom title on the left?

Aoi Yu, something about color no INDO he.

While checking Yu’s website, I also found out that WOWOW will be showing a broadcast of Minami he~ it would be super awesome if someone took the time to record that and upload it so we could watch — even without subs. LOL

Minami he – WOWOW
July 8th, 11:30pm

Yup, that’s it.

what have you guys been up to lately?

Needle heels should be banned from choreographed music videos.
on Meisa Kuroki dancing with heels.

I’ll eat my words by the end of this post, don’t worry.

As you all know, I’m a late K-pop bloomer. Since everyone around me seems to be into Kpop, I don’t keep an eye on it because I don’t feel like I need to… I just wait for my friends to tell me what to watch. LOL

It is in my search for Glee + Kpop posts (because I want to see how much audience would be into it… not many), I ended up on the video posted on a celebrity gossip website, that shall remain nameless, of After School’s Let’s Step Up MV.

They described it as Glee Korean style — which is not. As you know I love Celtic music, hence I also have a fascination with Riverdance, and tap dance. Let’s Step Up blew my mind. LOL Are you kidding me? Glossy pop music mixed with tap, mixed with Riverdance? I love it.

Continue Reading…

I was watching CCTV a couple of few days ago, when I saw the most awesome performance of the song Legend (传奇), which is sung by Faye Wong (I’m pretty sure she’s the original singer) in a beautiful way as well [1][2].

But this performance by Henan Opera singer Xiao Xiangyu (小香玉) literally brought tears to my eyes. I wasn’t able to get her name the first time I watched the show, but they repeated it last night and I wrote it down.

I managed to find a video with English subtitles. [CCTV looks better but it goes wrong after minute 15 or something – stuck on the freeze frame even when the audio continues]

[iframe src=”https://open.iqiyi.com/developer/player_js/coopPlayerIndex.html?vid=17928efefd8ba611dc8cac707ba8e835&tvId=2062401009&accessToken=2.f22860a2479ad60d8da7697274de9346&appKey=3955c3425820435e86d0f4cdfe56f5e7&appId=1368&height=100%&width=100%” width=”100%” height=”480″]

There’s even a bit of a funny part when they mention Jay Chou’s singing style. LOL They talk about the importance of Mulan in their national history, and discuss how Disney’s Mulan fell in love and there was a happy ending.

If you really want to skip all the show [Legend is about 20min. into the show], you can watch Xiao Xiangyu’s performance of Legend, but it doesn’t have subs and the quality is not the best.

Here’s another confession for the LGBT Blogathon~

What was once changed through literature, shaping individuals through writing, is now — kinda sadly — shaped through what we watch from television (and movies) because nobody reads anymore.

And so the medium of television becomes the ever important outlet for LGBT themes.

Television is free — though some people beg to differ — it reaches millions and millions of people through different channels around the world in many languages. Unlike film — you know, the one you pay for to enter a theater or catch at your local film festival — a lot more people watch television, and through it, sometimes watch film — see, television is so powerful even if you don’t watch it.

It is now, in our day and age (without counting the interwebs), that television plays a strong role into shaping the minds of the future generation of adults — that’s counting me, by the way… I’m not that old — who will hopefully grow into people who just won’t care whether you’re gay or straight or bi or transsexual. A generation that will ask about the need to add a “LGBT” genre tag when… it’s all normal!

Pride Bunting

This is my case. I came to know about LGBT issues because of television, which later prompted me to search online and then my world exploded with LGBT entertainment.

Continue Reading…

Welcome to my personal contribution to YAM Magazine’s LGBT Blogathon.

In this particular post we will be talking about Taiwanese boiband MISSTER, which I have already talked about on this MISSTER 101 post I did a while back.

Unlike the rest of the world, who have shunned dancing boybands (and girl groups) for more “rocking” affairs or idols who can’t dance at all, Asia is still a place where such groups have flourished for the past decade. The pop music industry is alive and well there, over-saturating our ears with danceable sugary pop tunes sung by idols that look so polished that it hurts.

Continue Reading…

LGBT Blogathon is ON!

June 1, 2011

Still deciding a few more films and tv shows I should review and talk about.

I don’t think I have enough time~

In the meantime, follow all the posts that will be added during the week.

The performance starts at nearly 1.20m.

Look, I really REALLY love her song Love Warrior, and I have surprisingly warmed up a lot to Nightmare, but this performance left me a bit empty. It sounded so much like the album version that, you know – it’s no good.

I don’t know many of her fans, but I would like people to tell me this is not her usual stuff and that it was TGC’s fault.