3 posts tagged “nicholas tse”

I'm stealing a meme, that's new.  Actually I just found this site with great music questions.  Maybe I'll try incorporating them more for inspiration.

3 songs you can't get enough of right now

1.Lucky Me - Vanness Wu (吳建豪)
Ok, this is not a style I listen to a lot.  Namely, male pop, and especially not this dancy, rappy, rnb-ish kinda stuff.   In fact, it's generally somewhere near the top of my hate list.  But this guy, Idk how he did it, but he made me fall for him. I'm really digging his music.  And this my favorite song for one simple reason.  That gunshot.  Lol.  But seriously, absolute best use of a gunshot in a song EVER.  I love it.

2.出神入化 – Fahrenheit (飛輪海)
I've always professed hate for boybands, and that mostly hasn't changed.  I figured Fahrenheit are good music that happens to be disguised in a boyband form.  But really, they're all really good singers.  Especially Wu Chun, and a lot of their music is not typical for that genre.  Sometimes they just sound like any other guitar-driven HK idolpop.  Heh, anyway.  I like this song because it's catchy and dancy and goes right along with that VW song I am obsessed with right now, lol.

3.Makes No Sense - Nicholas Tse
I've only been repeating this song because it goes with some scenes in a story I'm writing.  I first heard the song in Time and Tide, and it has that hard-to-pinpoint quality of a Bond song.  Slightly rocky, slightly trippy, funky, ridiculous bass, and yeah, that's really all that's necessary.  Plus, honestly.  I just generally have at least one Nic Tse song I'm obsessed with every week.

2 artists you'd like to recommend to us.

1.Vanness Wu
Especially to people who like that kind of music.  If *I* like it, honestly, it must be awesome, right?  This coming from someone who generally loathes it.  I can admit, I'm a bit biased because he's part of the Andy On, Philip Ng, Nic Tse ratpack too.  I'd recommend his greatest hits album first.  Mainly because it has Lucky Me.

2.Eunix Lee
I just heard her this week, and although she only has two EPs out, she's really awesome.  Not at all typical for a Cantopop artist.  Her music is edgy, rocky, dark, cool, and sometimes a little bit dancy.  It's hard to really box her in.  She has a great voice too.  Very soulful, edgy, low, smoky.  A lot of qualities I like.

1 album you can't wait to purchase

To be honest?  GLAY's Great Vacation or whatever that new, 3-disc monstrosity is called.  I've heard a lot of good things about the new songs, and on the other two discs are a lot of my favorites, including several from albums that are out of print now.  I'm pretty sick of Japanese CD prices though, so I'll probably be springing for the Korean version on YesAsia.  I've bought a few of those in the past, and I really don't see much difference.

Pros:

* A bunch of my favorite songs

* The shredding in 'Makes No Sense' was pretty cool

* Lemon was hot, Lemon is always hot so that's a wash

* The last song

Cons:

* Wtf was with the musicians all being in the pit and then sounding like they were mixed in the background?

* The weird solo-artist, idol-treatment thing going on

* The wings amg!  I hate wings ever since Hyde was obsessed with them.

* The retarded props, lol

The thing that's neither pro nor con was how sometimes he sounded really good and other times not so much.  But part of the latter was because of the stupid music being all in the background.  It takes some real major talent and training to sound good sans instruments, and often music written specifically for that.  Needless to say, most of the time it did him no favors.

Maybe I'm not used to this sort of thing.  I expected him to be rocking out with his "band" as it were.  I don't understand the point of having live musicians, and then sticking them in a pit and turning their portion of the sound down.  Maybe that's not his decision even.

Technical things...his guitaring was alright.  Ok, he only played it like, three times.  The last song was the best.  It wasn't purely shredding, and his fingers were pretty nimble, lol.  Singing...again, he pretty much sounded similar to the albums.  It was clear he wasn't trying to get fancy or anything.  Breathing was too obvious sometimes, but then, I'm really picky about that.  I prefer breathing is seen and not heard.

Overall, it was strangely sterile.  Like, the whole thing.  It was a little surprising, because my Youtube foreys did not suggest this.  He was very charismatic singing 'Come Together' on some unknown music show.  Makes me wonder if all Chinese concerts are like that.

Alright, the time has come to tell everyone what the hell is up with the Nic Tse takeover.  He went from about 200 plays to over 700 plays in the span of, well, less than a month.  So, what gives?  Why can't I stop listening to him?  I actually haven't really been able to figure this out myself.  Especially since I first heard his stuff last year, and though I liked it, it didn't immediately have an effect.  It wasn't until last month where I suddenly took notice again. 

He's obviously a solo artist, and given the controlling nature of the HK music industry, I know he does some of his composing and writing, but I also know he doesn't do all of it.  Not that he couldn't, because, like I said, HK music is a whole different animal from Japanese, and the big stars are require to release an absurd amount of material in a short time.  Unfortunately, he qualifies as one of these big stars because he's also a pretty well-known actor.

But anyway, back to the music.  It's actually very well done, so between him and whoever he's got working for him, they don't lack in talent.  Interesting composition, oftentimes involving well-placed string sections, plenty of guitar solos, even in slow songs, very hearable bass.  I think that's another thing I like, he doesn't have very many of those really slow, put-you-to-sleep kinda ballads.  His down-tempo stuff still tends to be guitar-driven.  Which reminds me, he does play the guitar, but again, I don't know how much of it he does.  I have a playlist of about 70ish songs out of 100+ that I consider my favorites.  Of those, about 40 are incredibly catchy earworms.  I like songs with good hooks.  It doesn't make them "pop", it makes them good.  After all, who has the most memorably catchy classical compositions?  Mozart, naturally.  If you can write a piece of music that gets in someone's head after one listen, that means it caught their attention with something interesting.  A good hook is not necessarily repetitive either.

I digress.  When it comes right down to it, yes, the music is good.  It's rocky, it's catchy, it's fun to listen to, but ultimately, I'm probably in love with him mostly because of his singing.  I guess I usually require two things to get really hooked on an artist.  Good music.  That is, interesting music with individual parts that stand out, but also hooks.  I am addicted to hooks.  Secondly, singing.  This is why my top 3 artists on Last FM are MUCC, DEAD END and Nicholas Tse.  All three of them have those qualities that keep me listening for hours and days at a time, thus racking up huge playcounts.  The artists just below them are the Studs and Merry, and both only have half.  The Studs have a vocalist who is complete and utter trash, and Merry, a little of both.  Their music isn't consistant, lately, it's bordering suckland, and Gara is alright, but he isn't consistant either.

So back to Tse Ting Fung.  I knew this thing would be full of tangents.  Ahem.  He is a clean singer.  Above all else.  He isn't constantly pushing the limits of his ability, like say, Morrie and Tatsurou.  He doesn't have an awesome range, but there, again, he doesn't push it.  He doesn't try to do things he can't do.  He doesn't abuse vibrato, or sing in falsetto too much.  He doesn't growl or scream.  Yes, I'm aware it's a list of "doesn'ts", but again, that's part of why I can listen to him so much.  I get too picky sometimes.  I don't care if it's emotion or whatever else, I just want to hear clean singing.  But then, that also brings me to the very best part.  Clean singers often come off as boring and flat in the emotion department.  Kind of like Andy Lau, for instance.  He's plenty clean too, but there's no emotion there most of the time.  You don't feel anything.  And that's the big difference.  Nic Tse somehow manages to be an incredibly emotional singer.  You feel every word, every note, you get the impression that he means what he sings, he believes in his music.

It's in the little things.  Some well-placed vibrato, an extra-long hold, a foray into falsetto, some added rasp, a dynamic change, a bunch of different stuff.  I dunno, but I never get tired of listening to it, and apparently not the songs either.  I would like to find some examples, naturally, but being lazy and not wanting to fool with audio thing on here, I looked on Youtube for my favorites.  The last one could be my very favorite, but I'm not sure.  It's too hard to pick just ONE.  I have about ten, I think.