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MUSIC: Mainstream magnetism

PERFORMANCE NOTES: WHAT: Julee Karan WHEN: Sunday at 7:30pm WHERE: Taipei International Convention Center (台北國際會議中心大會堂), 1, Xinyi Rd Sec 5, Taipei City (台北市信義路五段1號) ADMISSION: NT$700 to NT$2,500, available through ERA ticketing or online at www.ticket.com.tw ON THE NET: www.myspace.com/juleekaran

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Modern pop ballads are the new jazz standards for Julee Karan. The track listing on the Japanese singer’s debut album, Lover’s Jazz (2008), reads like a playlist from an easy-listening radio station: there are 1980s hits like The Police’s Every Breath You Take or Culture Club’s Do You Really Want to Hurt Me and other classics such as The Supremes’ You Can’t Hurry Love and John Lennon’s Love.

Karan, who appears this Sunday at the Taipei International Convention Center (台北國際會議中心大會堂), has set out to put a new spin on these contemporary songs.

“I thought it could make a fresh impression if I made them in a slightly jazz arrangement,” she said during a promotional visit to Taipei in August.

The 27-year-old’s gentle, honey-smooth voice and mellow lounge singer’s demeanor have resonated with mainstream Taiwanese audiences. Last year, Lover’s Jazz was the top-selling album for five weeks on G-Music’s jazz charts, which tracks sales at Rose Records (玫瑰唱片) and Tachung Records (大眾唱片), the nation’s largest chain record stores.

The album also made a splash in Europe, reaching the Top 10 on the iTunes charts in Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Karan, whose real name is Yuko Masumoto, comes across as the girl next door. Speaking to the Taipei Times in fluent English with a Japanese-inflected British accent, she said she was so embarrassed about her singing that she spent her teenage years practicing in secret in her room.

Even though her “audiophile dad” played jazz records and American oldies at their home in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Karan grew up preferring J-pop like most of her friends, until she went to university and began singing in music clubs. She credits her parents’ musical tastes for her aptitude for jazz singing, but nowadays she draws inspiration from American R ’n’ B and soul singers like Jill Scott and Erykah Badu.

She chose her stage name, which is the Japanese pronunciation of Judy Garland, as a tribute to one of her favorite singers (she covers Over the Rainbow on Lover’s Jazz).

Karan giggles when asked why she chose to sing the Isley Brothers’ For the Love of You on her latest album, She Loves Jazz: “I like Jude Law, the actor.” Her rendition of the tune, she said, is reminiscent of “the morning breeze, bright sunshine, the sea and the blue sky.”

Many of the new album’s songs will appeal to mainstream Taiwanese tastes. She covers Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You and She, the song by songwriter Charles Aznanour that resurfaced as a hit when Elvis Costello covered it in 1999.

Karan takes the stage on Sunday backed by a pianist, bassist and drummer, and the audience can expect to hear selections from both albums as well as a few Japanese songs.

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