Well, my dear friend Davian(look for him at davianteo.wordpress.com) who has been reading my blog regularly(thanks for supporting me!!!) has asked me to review on mandarin songs and i would gladly love to just that it really takes time to think of a theme to review on. And finally i got it! SInce i love female singers(for their voice not their bods) and i love acoustic sets (minimal instruments) i decided that maybe i should do a review on a few acoustic love ballads by some chinese female artist.
Today we will look at 2 very talented artist, both of them write their own music including the ones that i will be reviewing:
1) 蔡健雅(Tanya Chua) – 思念(recollections)
2) 陳綺貞(Cheer Chen) – 小步舞曲(Waltz)
I have a friend who tells me that he can’t take chinese songs at all cos they are just too emo! You can roughly imagine the kind of songs he listens to (BARNEY IS A DINOSAUR…..). Haha just kidin. Well anyway, i think to a certain extend its true. Not that english songs are not emo but i think there are definitely more emo chinese songs than english songs that we usually know of. Well lets cut the crap and get to the main topic.
Tanya chua, a singaporean, song-writer-singer-producer, has won the best female singer award twice at the 金曲獎(Golden melody awards-the most prestigous chinese music award).
The interesting thing about her is that, she actually changed her style of music right after she got her first award. That is rather strange because usually after you recieve an award you think that that is the kind of music that will bring you more awards. But instead she changed her style almost totally from a very poppish style to a more indie influenced(still poppish though)style that can be clearly seen in her “Hello & Goodbye” album. But guess what? She won again even after changing her musical style. I admire her courage and effort in that album, you can totally hear where she is coming from and that she just really put in lots of effort into producing it.
The song above, 思念 is not from her award winning album but is totally ripped off from one of the songs from that album. Well, it is a nice song to listen to over and over again, it has some nice lyrics to go with, it makes you emo, its simple, it has all the ingredients to making a hit song in the chinese industry. But, not good enough for me. I could clearly hear mistakes made by the guitarist(probably her) and the song becomes a little cliche when it comes to the chorus. Well and i said that it was a ripped off right? let me show you why.
It uses exactly the same chords during the intro(even the plucking pattern is almost the same, try it davian). And i loved the song 達邇文, it has amazing lyrics and the chord progression is just killer man. But to rip off such a big part of the song and put into this song is really unappreciated(in my opinion). Well, but i have to say, even so, i really enjoyed the song and i really enjoyed her voice most importantly. And i know you will enjoy it.
小步舞曲 by Cheer Chen(also a song-writer-singer-producer) on the other hand is a well composed and well performed song, without any obvious flaws in the music. Even though her songs are also somewhat similar in style, but she definitely didn’t ripe this song off from her other songs or vice versa.
The chorus uses an ascending progression (G Am Bm C D). A rather unusual progression, seldom used in popular mandarin songs and she actually found a nice melody to go with it. For that i really salute her. She have to put in a little more work on her lyrics though; i mean it rhymes and it definitely makes sense, but it didn’t ache my heart as much as Tanya’s song. But i still love this song.
Cheer on the other hand has been very consistent in her musical style(mostly melancholic sounding indie songs), always knowing what her fans like and i would have to say has never failed me either. Even though she isn’t like a ultra big star in the region, but she just keeps doing what she does best and she just delivers her music so well.
Well shall not talk too much now. thats about it. Just wanna share some nice music with you guys. SO…….
No Music-to, No Dream-to
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