Xue Zhiqian did a great job trying to get votes for his company juniors, Cotton Candy and looked hot while doing it.
Xue Zhiqian opened up the show with a performance of Let Go, one of only two tracks from his latest album that he didn’t write. He also later on did a great rendition of a song he did write, his first hit, Ren Zhen De Xue. But the show was not about Xue Zhiqian, but two other artists. As suspected, Cotton Candy was great, but surprisingly, HIT-5 wasn’t bad either. A lot better than I thought their performance would be.
Singaporean singer Yong Bang was the older musician supporting HIT-5. and Gao Xiaosong was the CMO judge. His credits include producing and sometimes writing for the likes of legends like Liu Huan, Lao Lang, and Na Ying.
Visit Official HIT-5 for the rest. Thank you for putting up perhaps the first full episode from this show. I really like how it gives new artists a platform for exposure and I hope Hunan keeps improving on it.
At the press conference for Jia You! Eastern Angels (the female version of My Hero) Wang Zhonglei, the Hua Yi president revealed the details of director Feng Xiaogang‘s newest film, Tangshan Earthquake.
The Tangshan Earthquake occurred in 1976 and was the most destructive earthquake of the 20th century by death toll, with numbers in the hundreds of thousands, in contrast to the devastating The Sichuan Earthquake with a death toll around 70,000.
Talk about advertising; Jane steps up her role as Chengdu's mascot by naming her company after it.
With Sichuan being the home to half of all mainland musicians, it’s time that music moves back to Sichuan. Since her contract with Huayi Music expired (no news yet about the management company), that’s what Jane Zhang‘s set out to do. “Show City Music” in English, the Chinese name is “Shao Cheng Yin Yue,” with “Shao Cheng/City of Youth” being a nickname of Chengdu. The employees, too, are mostly Sichuanese. The one other signed singer is Wang Zhengliang, one of the three eeMedia Super Boys from the Sichuan Conservatory of Music.
Jane has always been quite vocal and articulate about her thoughts about the Chinese music industry, so it’ll be interesting where she takes <Show City. Show City’s first project is Wang Zhengliang’s new song , “Count to three and let go together,” with Zhang Yadong as producer and Jane as the executive producer. Show City artists ready to rock the roof
In the second episode, "Mi Yao Yue Dui" from Thirteenth Month Records won over Wen Jiao.
Mix-box aka Jie Jie Gao Sheng, the show that gives a stage for new artists, is back, this time changing its format and stepping up the quality of their musicians. First to go is the old show format, where through some strange and twisted way, the singers that fail to impress the judge gets to sing their whole song and the rest gets only 30seconds. In its place is a system where two singers PK each episode and the winners will battle each other out. Interestingly enough, the contestants are often paired to have a more “pop idol” versus a more “non-idol musician.”
“Mi Yao Yue Dui” is a classical folk song group consisted of lead vocalist/guitarist and ex-Super Boy Zhou Luming and celloist Meng Nan. (more…)
Someone asked me what happened to Vicky Liu Yanwei, whom I posted about when she debuted as a singer under Chengtian ent. Well after finishing album promotions she is apparently joining the production of Chinese-Style Dating, a series that I had already been paying attention to because of the lead Qiao Zhenyu. Qiao Zhenyu is one of those really really good-looking, charismatic actors in China that falls into the same category that Yan Kuan does: could be doing worse but also could be doing a lot better for the combination of looks+talent he’s got. He’s received leading roles, but nothing that makes him truly famous. So I was happily surprised to see Liu Yanwei join him in this comedy about finding love in modern China, set around the beautiful beaches of Sanya.
Maybe Mars, the newbie record label in China that launched the bands Carsick Cars, Joyside and Snapline, amongst others finally released Carsick Cars‘ first MV a month ago, for their song Muo Gu, Muo Gu, or Mushroom Mushroom, and I think the MV reflects the title pretty well.
There was an interview with Zhou Shouwang of Carsick Cars featured at Danwei.org, and with their permission, I’m posting part of it here because I like the insight it gave about Chinese music past and present.
The producers behind the series based on the third installment of the Chinese Paladin RPG series have announced what’s to be expected on the soundtrack of the game, and packaging details for the “Gold Edition DVD”, which is going to be one of the best DVD sets ever. Seriously. Also released was the ending theme, sung by Hu Ge. I am now 10 x more excited for this series than I was before.
Intro 2009- Ideas Need To Reach Out
3 stages, 15 hours, 28 artists, 10,000 people, 46,000 m² open-air plaza
It’s so cool how there’s so many music festivals showing up in China now. The first one was the Midi Music Festival 10 years ago, and there’s been increasingly more options. Two years ago, China’s biggest indie label Modern Sky started the Modern Sky Festival, then this summer they launched the Strawberry Music Festival. There was also the Zebra Music Festival in Chengdu (Chloe Wang and MC Jin performed there) and there’s been many others. Now China’s first independent electronic label, Acupuncture Records has launched Intro2009, China’s first Electronic Music festival gathering top-off the line equipment and artists for the event.
Of the four semi-Chinese films that were in competition at Cannes, this was the one I least expected to pick up something. But Cannes was certainly odd this year, with all 20 competition films having directors that had been to Cannes before, and I guess anything could happen when in such a situation. One of Soldier Sortie’s (most popular tv drama in China in the past five years) cast members was in this film, and another cast member had cheered him on in his blog, saying that he was sure the film would take home a prize. I had thought that was stupid to say, but I guess he was right. It’s too bad that Ang Lee didn’t win the Palme d’Or for Taking Woodstock because then he would have taken home all the most prestigious film festival awards. Top prize instead went to Austria’s White Ribbon.
Too lazy to post up all the pictures (Shu Qi started looked happy towards the end of the festival!) but you can check it out at Sina’s Cannes site.
Someone commented in an earlier post there were many artists in Taiwan that spoke English in contrast to China. I think partly that is because their established music industry allows TW Americans musicians to try their luck with reasonable expectations of success. However as China’s market gets bigger, more Chinese Americans may want to do the same thing. One of the first could be be Chloé Wang (汪可盈) , a teenage singing phenomenon hailing from Chicago, U.S.A. born to a Chinese father with Shanghai roots and an American mother. She’s been recording in Beijing and has already performed in Chengdu as seen in the video below.
