This is JVRmusic's first newcomer Cindy Yen 袁咏琳 – totally no recording experience nor reputable composition. I know her path won't turn out good with the first song release. It's a shadow production. The most obvious reason is, it's a duet and she has got the senior
aka JVRmusic boss Jay to sing with her. Next, the new track turns out to be an R&B with orchestra, and she shamelessly commented in the radio introduction that she has incorporated cello, violin and piano in the piece blah blah blah. (Analogy: It's the same disgust I have when Fahrenheit expressed that they use falsetto 假音 in their
chorus and it turned out horrible, compared to the real singers with heavenly falsetto. My wrong-doing here, I shouldn't do comparison. Bleah~ By the way I don't condemn Fahrenheit. But they are better off acting than doing a
S.H.E chord or
Energy dance.) My point here is Cindy has too successfully steered the focus of her composition approach to the song arrangement style that every musician out there (hello~~~) are doing already, like bread and butter, while she's still clinging to it like diamond. She could have said she played the piano at the interlude or she has been playing the violin since the age of 5, etc. These definitely sound more appealing than "Oh I have added in cello, violin and piano; hope it will be refreshing to you." No it doesn't.
Anyway I read on PTT that the song was a homework given by boss Jay to become her introductory track in her debut album and it was recorded only after rejections from Jay twice. WTF! She's just a pseudo composer-singer! She can't even insist on her own composition style. WTF No.2: Why does she have to have a duet as the introductory track in her debut album? Moreover it's with Jay? WTF No.3: Why is this composer-singer making her composition just before her debut album? Focus on my text 'just'. And she didn't even write the lyrics. The definition of 'composer-singer' is not like this! Oh well~ nothing turns out good when they associate themselves with Jay without a comparable achievement / popularity. (An exception, I think Gary Yang 杨瑞代 sounds great in
Havana 哈瓦那. At least he doesn't sounds like Jay.) The listeners are hungry now, we need more excitement!
It was quite a torture when I posted Cindy's information onto jay2u last week. On one hand I really feel negative about her. On the other, I have to share the information around. So I have to select my adjectives very carefully so that I won't be part of the blind fans liking everything that Jay produced and yet without expressing my negative feelings. Despite being part of jay2u, I actually felt very detached from it recently. First, it's the people. Second, oh well, I think it's still the people. The site has become rather vacant and redundant now. Worst is there is a shift in our status at the starting of 2009 and no one is answering our questions. For your information, jay2u was the official international fanclub for Jay but JVRmusic won't recognize us now and refused to let us have their logo on our site. And we even changed the club name by removing the 'official'. Anyway, my membership expired last December and nobody knows what is going to happen. What's so great being the Singapore moderator? Oh, don't remind me that Jay is coming on 20 December; I am so reluctant to do anything. (Sidetrack about Cindy again, there's a funny comment on PTT saying the China media is associating her to all the
J-ladies, like her big mouth (oops) is like Jolin Tsai, her side profile resembles Patty Hou, her disposition is like Alice Ceng, her build is similar to Jessie Chiang blah blah blah. Oh no, now she's a shadow artiste. You know, when the media starts to stereotype, the listeners will get hypnotized.)
Actually the reason that inspired me to break my 2 months hiatus to write this, is a
plurk from Peggy Hsu. (Pause. You think I would want to waste my effort to introduce the newcomer on my blog? I'm getting very subjective recently; because I've learnt that not everything that Jay is interested in will appeal to me.) PS: I loved Peggy Hsu's latest album Mei Hao De 美好的. And I was very privileged to hear her live at Riverside House this September when I was at Taipei. She sounded heavenly! Anyway, in her plurk, she was very tactical, she didn't write any names, but the subject was obvious.
Peggy Hsu: 全創作專輯...
[Self-composed album...]
Peggy Hsu: 要花多少的時間和精力才有辦法完成一張全創作專輯..
[How much time and energy is required to produce a self-composed album..]
Peggy Hsu: 但是現在, 只要寫幾首詞, 文案一寫, 報紙一登, 兩行字, 就變成"全創作"專輯了..
[But now, a few lyrics, a proposal, paper publicity with two lines, are sufficient to create a "self-composed album"..]
Then Crowd Lu replied:
我可能需要個兩年 因為我寫詞超慢的拉 阿哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈
[I may need two years. Because I am really slow with my lyrics. Ahahahaha]
He sounded like he was joking, but the hidden emotions are all summarized in Peggy's next comment.
Peggy Hsu: 也不是不平衡, 只是覺得, 我們好像要更拼! 要花更多的時間, 才能達到他們兩行字的效果! 哈!
[It's not injustice. I just feel that we need to work even harder! There's a need to spend even more time in order to get the effect of that two lines!]
I guess it's my recent indulgence in indie music, I really sympathize their hard work. The market is very unfair, the media is getting too lazy (
classic example by Merry) and the listeners are too clever. But I am still afraid that good quality production will deteriorate when they get more media exposure. Think Jay. He is producing for the money now; I wonder how long he can go. Everybody's chasing after him because he is Jay. I included. There is no more excitement in his works. There is no improvement when everybody is boot-licking.
All the time, good things are best kept to yourselves. Bad things we just dissipate into the atmosphere.
Lastly, with reference to my starting paragraph, Cindy Yen is releasing her first 'self-composed' album on 30 October. (At first) I wanted to end with a friendly note (whenever I gave a negative review) like "Let's hope that Cindy Yen's other 9 tracks will be able to showcase her unique talent that I have yet to hear from the first one. She must have some factors that have attracted Jay to sign her into the company." Oh! Did I just showed my friendliness by writing that line above? But I decided I shall not look forward to anything. (PS: Crowd 卢广仲's
Seven Days 七天 will be a much better choice for tomorrow.)
