Asian Music December 23, 2007

Gotta love the foreign music these days, whether its the typical Japanese artists that every otaku knows, or the less noticed artists that we all still love, the styles are always so interesting.

A few that caught my eye:

Michael Wong, or Wang Guang Liang (王光良) is one of the popular Chinese pop singers these days, but he isn’t very cute according to all my friends. However, he has a great mix of music, and his videos are always so heartwarming. He plays in all of them, and usually has a girl that he’s always with. But don’t dream of being in one of them. Most of his videos has the girl dying in the end; save one or two. No wonder girls don’t think he’s cute, they’re afraid of dying by being with him. Pretty dangerous, I must say.

Popular Songs: Fairy Tale (Tóng Huà 童話), Commitment (Yuē Dìng 約定), First Time (Dì Yī Cì 第一次)

Another popular singer, Zhang Liyin, is the first and only Chinese singer to break the Korean charts. Critics call her the next BoA (more on her later). She was originally pushed by her parents tobe a violinist, but eventually went towards singing. Cute, yet mature, Zhang Liyin sings powerfully, and most notably for me, in Timeless. Timeless is a duet sung with Xiah Junsu, and has a beautiful story of loss, and remorse in it. Timeless is a remake of Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini’s 2003 version. Check out the video on youtube.

Popular Songs: Timeless, Y (Why)

One of the artists I hate the most in the Chinese music industry, Leehom Wang should die. No, really. (The story: a chinese girl who weighed 95 pounds and thought she was fat, decided to throw all her dreams of marrying Leehom Wang on me. Imagine 5 hours of a twelve year old saying: OMG I WANNA MARRY HIM HES SO HOT, then you’ll understand.) In spite of my roots of hatred towards him, Leehom Wang is the perfect specimen of men. He can play 10 musical instruments, and never knew Chinese until 18, yet writes full Chinese lyrics. Did I mention that people think he’s the hottest person on the planet.

Men should be jealous.

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Now lets end with one of my favorite Japanese singers.

Yuna Ito; I dont know much about her, but I know she has some amazing songs. The one that got me that most was “I’m Here,” a song with fast vocals and beautiful string ensembles. Review was differing with other critics, but this one thought it was pretty well balanced. A little background: Yuna Ito became famous by auditioning for the movie rendition of the popular manga Nana. She was originally born in America, but quickly rose to popularity in Japan.

Well that’s about it for the Asian singers round-up. I know, I didn’t hit all the countries.

Oh, you can always check this out for one of the popular Korean songs these days.