I think I was posting a Mavis Fan track on Weibo when I ended up finding Vegetarian Fish, a site that was put up for Mavis Fan’s project with her mother, Miss D.D. Mavis produced the self-titled album for her mother, and sang a version of Doris Day’s Everybody Loves a Lover [1] with a nice mother/daughter moment in their music video.
It’s hard to come by official links when looking in English, so I’m ecstatic that Mavis uses the channel for uploads of her group Mavis Fan & 100%, even if it’s just to wish us all Happy Chinese New Year with a short track/clip of The God of Wealth Has Arrived (財神到, Cai Shen Dao). And the doodles of the video are pretty funny, especially the one featuring Tony Leung because Mavis and Tony were on The Silent War last year. xD
If you follow Tony Leung’s career… or the Chinese movie scene in general, you’d know there’s a movie coming up called The Silent War (聽風者 or 听风者) — actually, it has just come out — featuring Leung alongside Zhou Xun and Mavis Fan (these two are in everything together??) xD.
Anyway, BiBi was at the movie’s premiere~
And she sang the theme of Infernal Affairs [MV] in Mandarin ‘coz Tony is there. xD
She did good :) She’s been sounding good lately despite audio problems generally found in CCTV broadcasts. Seriously, it’s like… no matter how good a singer you are, all CCTV performances sound like crap. Not even Leehom or Faye Wong can escape.
Also, Mavis is the only one truly enjoying the performance. xD
And Tony Leung’s left side looks super old compared to his right side.
Unlike the Kpop list which it focused 99% of the time on dance pop friendly tracks that went beyond American commercial pop, this “Cpop” list is… not really pop.
Popular music in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China (but mostly Taiwan) tends to be pop/rockish flare. Sure there are dance pop friendly, but even they have moved or are moving more towards pop/rock. They also love indie flavor, and accept not particularly attractiveness in their idols… even though there are some very good looking people who are immensely popular.
To be completely honest, compared to Korea’s pop music charts, Chinese music charts have a broad variety. But then again, compared to Japan’s pop music charts (which is comprised of AKB48 and Arashi xD), even Kpop charts (mostly 2NE1 and Big Bang now that DBSK is gone) seem to have some variety. xD
So this list of great Chinese music includes varying genres from R&B, pop/rock… more rockish, ballads (regular and of the indie type), etc. once again listed by year of release.
Again, it’s a bit weak on the earlier years… but you are welcome to make suggestions (for any year). A few guidelines would be that they cannot be too indie (I couldn’t fit Cheer Cheen or Mavis Fan in the list because they don’t feel completely pop, if you know what I mean), 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.
This one turned out to be really awesome, if I may say so myself.
Of course, I have been trying to put this together since last year, LOL – so it’d better be good, right? Though, I know there are some repeat tracks if you’ve followed the blog, I think it’s fair to say that the combination of songs has a nice flow. It’s turned out to be a really moody list~
You can check my previous Chinese Music Playlists [1][2]
Mavis Fan (范曉萱) - I Want Us to Be Together (我要我們在一起)
Waa Wei (魏如萱) – Shangri-La (香格里拉)
Jing Chang (張芸京) – Broken (壞了)
Leehom Wang (王力宏) – Daily Necessities (柴米油鹽醬醋茶)
R-Chord featuring LaLa Hsu (謝和弦 feat. 徐佳瑩) – Under the Willow Tree (柳樹下)
Stefanie Sun (孫燕姿) – Silent All These Years
A-Mei Chang (張惠妹) – What Time Is It Already? (你在看我嗎)
Jing Chang (張芸京) – The Opposite Me (相反的我)
Chris Lee (李宇春) – Lost Heart Crazy (失心瘋)
Dream Girls – Weak (軟弱)
A-Mei Chang (張惠妹) [as AMIT] - After the Sentimental Love of Animals (相愛後動物感傷)*
Stefanie Sun (孫燕姿) - The Kingdom of Fools (愚人的國度)
*Note: There’s some blurred nudity and depictions of sex in that video.
Having realized that he’s made my favorite Faye Wong video, I just spent all night “curating” a list of 77 MVs of some of the music videos he’s directed since 1997… but only of the artists I follow… otherwise the list is just endless~
Most of the time, his style is described as just about style, emotion and composition. Though, I have seen a few of those that have something resembling a plot.
Faye Wong – Bu Liu/ Nothing Left
I think that video captures what I essentially love about Faye Wong.
