Archives For bibi chow (zhou bichang)

Bibi for HotSpot

November 12, 2011 — Leave a comment

I ran into these kinda high resolution images of Bibi’s turn out over HotSpot, which look positively rocking. I don’t think Bibi’s ever looked as cool promoting an album since I found out about her.

First Elle China, then this… then there’s Men’s Uno, which I should find bigger resolution versions of that photoshoot, because that one is cool too.

This is my favorite shot xD

I gotta admit. I got a little choked up with this music video, and I’m totally pumped for Sodagreen’s upcoming new album… also titled What is Troubling You (你在煩惱什麼) — which, I have to admit~~~ comes at a bad time when Bibi is coming up with her new album and the Brown Eyed Girls are coming up with her nifty-licious repackaged Sixth Sense.

Did I tell you? I pre-ordered Sixth Sense and I ate it up like a sucker.

What makes me even more of a sucker, however, is that I had just pre-ordered the repackaged version too. Alongside Bibi’s new album.

Anyway, this new wonderfully sad and strangely uplifting music video comes from the brilliant mind of Muh Chen Yi Ren, from GrassJelly Studio — who also worked on my favorite Sodagreen MV… Incomparable Beauty [MV]. When these two get together, they make magic.

The lyrics seem… simple. I mean there’s not much lyrics… but I’m having issues with the double negative hahaha. I guess this is going to be my next Chinese class then!

Pinyin will do until then!

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Oct 11

BiBi’s Sherlock Holmes

I am just in love with this new track 福尔摩斯, which apparently is Sherlock Holmes’ name in Chinese xD. Can’t wait for the new album, and actually get hands on lyrics on WHY it’s called like that… like I did with Canned Fish~~~ LOL

The arrangements on the song is quite simple compared to other more elaborate BiBi songs, but that styles suits her great because her voice sounds quite amazing. At first I was struck at how soft the song started, which then builds up. After a few listens — yes, I’ve listened to it multiple times already — it struck me like a really soft version of Eason Chan’s Exaggerate [1] which then turns into this classical sounding Stefanie Sun-type song. I love it. At the same time, you can listen to BiBi’s voice and it’s all the much better xD

I don’t want to say that I didn’t like the lyrics, but you gotta admit that there’s a certain beauty when the music and a voice can speak to you more than whatever the song can be about.

Besides, being at very basic Mandarin level, this is probably the only level of lyrics that I can try to attempt to work with anyway… so I guess there’s nothing wrong with it. xD

If you want the pinyin lyrics, head over here.

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BiBi for Elle China

September 17, 2011 — 1 Comment

I never, in my life, would’ve thought that I would ever post a photoshoot featuring BiBi. Alas, here it is at the heels of promoting a new album and a new single — Black Apple [1] — BiBi looking quite fashion.

I can almost hear her BiBi laugh in this picture.

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Am I starting a series? Nah… I don’t think I can come up with a Jpop list xD

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.

[iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PL0C06C35FA9FC1C64&hl=en_US”]

YouTube link.

What do you like about the Cpop industry?

Who are your fave artists?

I just finally burnt Zhong Ping Huang’s (黄­中平) name in my head.

Because of A-Mei’s latest MV.

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.

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My purty iTunes Library~

April 22, 2011 — 4 Comments

I’m a dork, you can’t deny it.

I’m a dork, and I’m proud of my -mostly- tidied up iTunes library.

As with my CDs, and my DVDs… a little bit of books, and mostly with computer files, I like to know where my things are. Of course, iTunes makes it way easy to keep things organized with their “copy to folder” and “keep things organized” options, but then we’ve got album covers, song names, artists names… and music can get a little messy.

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The first edition of the Global Chinese Golden Chart was held recently in Taipei, Taiwan.

Besides Leehom performing All the Things You Never Knew, Bibi was also there performing a medley of her i.Fish.Light.Mirror singles, including a bit of Canned Fish (like… the intro LOL), Single Mirror, and finally closing with I Miss U Missing Me.

I’m happy that BiBi performs her best when there’s important people. LOL Like… she sounds pitch perfect when musician, producers, and actors are in the room. She doesn’t even need fireworks, outrageous clothing or flashy stuff, just her singing.

There’s this funny thing about fandom, they just don’t care about anything else that doesn’t directly affect fandom. So unless X-member of boy/girl group is directing a movie, you won’t hear who’s directing a film.

But then again, that’s what generally happens anywhere.

I just wished, at least, that labels would care to put this information down in their description fields… to make it easier. I know Chinese/Taiwanese music videos have the information — most of the times — of who wrote the music, the lyrics and who directed all in the video… but it makes it really REALLY SUPER REALLY hard for us, who don’t read character. For a two paragraph post, I have to spend 1hr (maybe) getting the character on paper, then using Japanese handwriting input or the Kanji dictionary to get the characters into a browser, and then search for it. And that’s just the bit where I get the names xD

Anyway, I feel illuminated because I have discovered 5 important names that I will highlight in this post. But since no one is more important than the other, it will be from most recent mentioned in the blog.

First, Bounce (比尔贾) of Bounce Visual Creative… the director of one of my latest fave music videos: Stefanie Sun’s The Kingdom of Fools, a song which bring me to… Francis Lee (李焯雄), a Taiwanese lyricist who wrote Sun’s lyrics for that song, as well as being in charge of many of the songs in BiBi’s NOW/WOW album… as well as the Canned Fish song.

Then theres’ COSMOS, aka. Yingzhi Chen (陳映之) who directed Elva Hsiao’s Let Love Fly, other artists… and has recently directed this new girl group called Dream Girls and their MV for Tears Should Also Be Beautiful… a song which was written by famous Taiwanese songwriter Yao Ruo Long (姚若龍), who is the one who wrote one of my 2010 faves- Broken by Jing Chang.

And finally, another video for Dream Girls (this time I’m Your Dreamgirl) directed me to Yi Ren Chen (陳奕仁), the MV director of such gems such as Incomparable Beauty and Little Love Song – all by Sodagreen ;D

I feel like I learned something important these past few days of posting CMusic MVs. LOL Too bad I still haven’t finished Chinese homework and it’s nearly 4am.