On paper Wu Bai (伍佰) looks like a typical superstar in the Mandarin-speaking music world: He has released nearly 20 studio albums, many of which were best sellers; he easily fills stadiums in Taiwan, China, Singapore and Malaysia; and he’s dabbled in acting and endorses a handful of commercial products.
Yet the 40-year-old singer-songwriter and guitarist is unique among his peers. With a new album released last month, Wu Bai has dodged the creative malaise that seems to afflict many long-established Mando-pop artists. He enjoys a broad appeal, earned partly because of his originality — he writes all of his songs, and is considered a pioneer in modern Taiwanese music for putting Hoklo lyrics to rock grooves. Stylistically he’s a musical chameleon. From album to album, he shifts from hard-edged blues rock to nostalgic-sounding Taiwanese folk, from Chinese ballads to electronica.
I met Wu Bai at an upscale Italian restaurant in Taipei near the office of his management company, Moonlight Music (月光音樂). He was instantly recognizable from a distance as he sat in a corner booth, puffing on a cigarette. His gruff baritone voice makes him sound brusque at first, but he is friendly and enthusiastic when discussing his music. Occasionally, a goofy charm breaks through his famously cool demeanor.
Why does he often change musical styles?
“Because I am never satisfied,” he says with a laugh. “When I do something, I’m interested in it … When I do something it’s got to have value to me, and it’s got to have meaning. When I search for a new [feel for an album], I try to do something that I think is good, and good for Chinese records.”
SPACE IS THE PLACE
Spacebomb, recorded with China Blue, his band of nearly 20 years, is about a group of human space travelers in the year 2406 and was inspired by Robert Charles Wilson’s science fiction novel Spin.
For Wu Bai, the novel opened his mind, but not to the world of science fiction as much as new creative possibilities.
“I had many things I wanted to say” about “societal problems,” including unemployment and Taiwan’s television media, which had been boiling in his mind since finishing his previous album two years ago. “But when you want to say something, you need a point of view, you want an attitude ... What I wanted to say was quite serious. How could I take this serious thing, sing it and make it entertaining?”
By taking the characters of his songs into outer space, he says they could look back at the chaos and confusion of their home planet with clarity and a “sense of humor.” The first song, also titled Spacebomb, is a rock number with a futuristic feel, full of playful computer synthesizer sounds and guitars that sound like laser guns.
The distance of outer space also gave Wu Bai a new way to vent his views on the current state of Taiwanese society. As the album progresses the space travelers reflect on the shortcomings of their world, including fashion crazes in Fashion Dog (時尚狗) or the melodramatic TV media in News Show (新聞秀). “I could be more direct without making it embarrassing or awkward,” he says.
ENTERTAINER OR ANGRY SOCIAL CRITIC?
Wu Bai sees himself first and foremost as a popular entertainer, one that just happens to write what’s on his mind. “I always put into my songs what I think of as society’s shortcomings, my dissatisfaction with them. But I don’t think [listeners] really care so much about these things.”
He prides himself on creating music that might be slightly unconventional for pop but is always accessible: “My music isn’t just for musicians — taxi drivers listen to it and get it,” he says.
“Many people think my music is taike, (台客) suitable for both old and young,” he says, referring to the once-derogatory term in Taiwan that inferred low-class or lack of style but is denotes street chic credibility and Taiwanese pride. “Old people and young children can all sing it ... it has a very strong Taiwan flavor to it.”
As such, Wu Bai is not interested in being hailed as a social commentator. “There’s no way [my music] can be like English or Irish music, where they can talk so directly about politics or the situation in society,” he says. “Of course there are people that will just go out there and sing about these things, but I don’t feel that I’m this type of person. I use myself more, my own feelings to express what I want to say [in a song] ... it’s my own anger. It doesn’t come from government policies or whatever. It comes from watching the news on TV. I can’t stand it. I think ‘how can this stuff be broadcast’?”
That anger often has the potential to make entertainment. He talks about his original idea for a music video for News Show: he wanted to parody the sensationalist “horror movie” mentality of Taiwanese TV news media by having “a pretty female newscaster with blood spurting out of her eyes.”
“She’d be there talking and smiling, with blood all over the floor,” he said with a hint of glee.
But it was not to be. “No one would broadcast that,” he said.
BORN AGAIN
Wu Bai says that the sci-fi rock album concept gave him a renewed sense of a freedom from Mando-pop songwriting formulas. “The lyrics, melodies — they could all be free. I didn’t have to worry that ‘oh, but Chinese songs have to be this way.’”
A yearning to reshape Mando-pop to his personal liking has been a recurring interest for the Chiayi (嘉義) native, whose first instrument was the tuba. “I didn’t like other people’s songs and I didn’t like any of the Chinese songs I was hearing. So I went and did something completely different from them,” he says laughing. “And that even includes stuff I did before.”
He says he doesn’t “like the logic of Chinese songs (華語歌),” because they are too commercially oriented. “No one is saying, I want to invent a new kind of music. Look at Western music — metal was invented, and then nu-metal. And then with rock, there’s this kind of rock, that kind of rock ... I didn’t have of any these things [when I started]. Before it was all ballads. Now it’s R ’n’ B.”
But for Wu Bai, creative desire takes precedence over musical style or genre — which he believes marks the difference between Asian and Western pop. “It’s because of me, not because the way I play guitar, or how I sing. It’s my thinking, my attitude, the way I look at things,” he says.
IT’S ALL ABOUT MOOD … AND THE PURSUIT
Wu Bai says his songs are ultimately grounded in one thing: “It all comes from the mood of a story. With a mood, I ask: What’s the story? What guitar makes that sound? How do I sing it? What words do I use? It’s not the story first, it’s the mood first.”
He doesn’t consider songwriting difficult, but hard work — he spent two months alone in his studio writing Spacebomb. “Songwriting is a little like looking into an antique mirror ... you dive into it, and when you start out, everything is black ... You must face yourself in the dark and slowly bring something out.”
By virtue of this process, he finds songwriting “more satisfying” than playing live. “Songwriting is more of a search ... when you create something new, the joy is very big … But playing live, I’ll finish a show and tomorrow I’ll be off for hot pot and will have forgotten about it by then.”
Not that he disparages live performances — far from it. Wu Bai and China Blue distinguished themselves early in their careers for raucous high-energy shows, which he considers an art form. “Each live performance is a work [of art] in itself. So it’s also not relaxing. If everyone’s unhappy, then I’m unhappy. If everyone’s happy, then I’m happy.”
Although he has yet to announce tour plans for next year, Wu Bai plans to expand on the concept behind Spacebomb by launching a new Web site, spacebomb.info, which will further develop the characters and themes from the album. He describes the site as “taike going into space.”
Nearly 20 years after he revolutionized Taiwanese rock, he shows no signs of weariness. “This is the only thing I can do. It’s never tiring, it’s quite fun. For me to go searching for a new sound, new concepts, new ideas — I need this. It keeps me alive.”
Wu Bai and China Blue play this Saturday at 9pm at Party Room, Core Pacific City Mall (京華城), 12F, 138, Bade Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市八德路四段138號12 樓). Tickets are NT$900 and are available at the door or through www.ticket.com.tw.
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