In a competition in which mainstream artists with strong sales dominated, Adia (
The best album went to newcomer Jay Chou (
Na Ying (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
In the eyes of the music industry, where money is the bottom line, the male nominees are small potatoes compared to the women. "Females have much higher recognition," said Perry Ko (
Taiwan's top seller at Tower Records in 2000 was Faye Wong (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
"The market for female singers is much, much bigger than the market for the guys," said Ko. "There's kind of a weird split. Female pop singers get both guys and girls buying their albums, but male pop singers only get women buying the records."
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
In a predictable award ceremony, in many categories, winners seemed to be selected on their record sales, with mainstream artists pushing out less famous names. A massive crowd attended the gathering, held for the first time in the event's 12-year history in Kaohsiung. The broadcasting rights for the event, which for the last three years have been held by TVBS, were taken for the first time by ETTV.
In an early surprise, Sun Yan-zi (
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Occasionally lapsing into English, the Singapore native said she was "surprised," "very happy," and that she appreciated the support and friendship of the other nominees.
Sun's fame has grown rapidly over the last two years, and a career comprised of only two CDs and a string of TV commercials has been sufficient to make her a star.
The conservatism of this year's Golden Melody Awards was further revealed by Chiang Hui's (
According to Ma Nien-hsien (
Sticky Rice was praised at the beginning of the award ceremony by Kaohsiung mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) as "representing a new element in Taiwan." Despite this, the trend toward picking big names was working against the group. Last year, there had been criticism that many of the winners were relatively unknown in the mainstream, and this year judges seem to have gone out of their way to pick only those groups that have been moving CDs in the stores.
Speaking after receiving their award, Ah Hsin (
While there were good crowds attending the event, some members of the public did give voice to the idea that such mainstream festivals did not altogether reflect their musical interests. "I like Jay Chou (
Liu Chia-chang (劉家昌), one of Taiwan's most prolific writer of golden oldies, received a lifetime achievement award. As the writer of the hit In Praise of the Republic of China (中華民國頌) and other patriotic songs, he spoke about how, under the DPP government, people now tiptoe around the name "Republic of China." This caused some embarrassment for the presenter of the award, the deputy director general of the Government Information Office.
Another usually minor category was for Best Classical Music, in which category the soundtrack for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was knocked out of the competition because it was not pure classical music, according to the judges. Officials said that a new movie soundtrack category may be incorporated in next year's event.
Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire, says our gut is a “complex machine.” “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what you put into it is balanced, and that you clear out its waste products adequately,” Verma says. “In a general gastroenterology clinic, the most common conditions we see are irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), gastroesophageal reflux disease, inflammatory bowel disease and constipation,” says Nisha
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Last week US President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether he would speak on the phone to the President of Taiwan. “l’ll speak to him. I speak to everybody. We have that situation very well in hand,” Trump said. This marked the second time in a couple of weeks he had said he would talk to the President of Taiwan. In 2016 he famously took a call from then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), when he was president-elect. Despite warnings that the apocalypse was nigh because of a phone call, the world quickly forgot about the conversation between two democratically-elected presidents.
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