Happy Chinese New Year!

 

As the byline says, Happy Chinese New Year or Gong Xi Fa Cai! (If I have this wrong, please correct me.) And indeed, it is the Year of the Snake whose titular animal is supposed to bring wisdom, transformation, calmness and creativity. I can only hope that this is really true. Within my city, I've got a number of friends who are probably celebrating with their families so I wish them well on this day.

In any case, I don't quite believe that up to now, I haven't had an article commemorating Chinese New Year but I will rectify that now. I had initially thought about putting up songs which have had something to do with Chinese places or culture, but I've now decided to post songs by singers who have come from places such as Hong Kong and Taiwan to provide hits within the kayo kyoku world.

(1971) Feifei Ouyang -- Ame no Midosuji （雨の御堂筋）

(1973) Agnes Chan -- Sougen no Kagayaki (草原の輝き）

(1979) Judy Ongg -- Miserarete （魅せられて）

(1984) Teresa Teng -- Tsugunai (つぐない）

(1987) Jackie Chan -- Telephone

Jackie Chan -- Telephone

I’ve always had fun with Jackie Chan’s (ジャッキー・チェン) movies, especially 2002’s bad critically acclaimed “The Tuxedo” (the gorgeous Jennifer Love Hewitt even played Jackie’s partned in this one), but I could never guess that Jackie had an active singing career, mostly during the 80s (he even collaborated with aidoru Naoko Kawai [河合奈保子] in the late 80s). After discovering this fun fact, I quickly started searching for some of his albums and the first one I came across was 1987’s “No Problem” (無問題/モウマンタイ), which was one of the albums he released for the Japanese market. 

The whole album (nine songs in total) is a pretty nice collection of synthpop songs, but it could have been better without the boring ballads (one third of the album, if I'm not mistaken). As we're talking about Jackie Chan, it's an okay result... he's always a fun guy to watch or, in this case, to listen to. In a more specific way, though, the one song that grabbed my attention and even conquered a place in my diverse “RANDOM SONGS” file was “Telephone”, the album’s opener. 

“Telephone” was a big surprise to me because of its major City Pop vibes. Jackie doesn’t sing here, limiting himself to some speaking sentences in English, Japanese and Chinese, so the music is the main focus. Also, I don’t really know why, but the song’s whole cheesiness makes me feel very warm inside. Well, let’s be honest here, Jackie receiving a phone call, talking simple sentences in three different languages and wishing Merry Christmas and Happy New Year with an easy listening song playing behind is the epitome of the word cheesy... and that’s hilarious! In the end, how do not love this song? Sax, synths, bass, the beautiful piano... and Jackie being Jackie. The world is perfect again.