Yen-j (嚴爵) is that rare newcomer to the Mando-pop scene who possesses both good looks and talent in spades.
The singer/songwriter and producer’s debut album Thanks Your Greatness (謝謝你的美好) brilliantly combines jazzy flourishes and catchy pop for ebullient musical musings on romance and other meaningful pursuits. It peaked at No. 2 on G-Music’s Mandarin album chart after its release last month and has been lauded by veteran entertainers Dee Hsu (徐熙娣), better known as Little S (小S), and Wang Lee-hom (王力宏). Two tracks became theme songs for TV soap dramas My Queen (敗犬女王) and P.S. Man (偷心大聖PS男).
“I spent 20 months recording this album,” said Yen-j, whose concert tomorrow night at Riverside Cafe (河岸留言) has already sold out. “I went through a period in which I wrote one song per day and I must have accumulated a hundred songs.”
“My label trusts me enough to allow me to produce my own album the first time out. In order to come up with the best result, I re-recorded all the songs numerous times.”
Yen-j performs two sets at Riverside Cafe tomorrow night in an evening titled Yen-j “I Like … No, I Love Yen-j” Concert (嚴爵“我喜歡…不，我愛嚴爵”演唱會) as a warm-up for his first stadium gig, Yen-j 「Endless Beauty Version」 Concert (嚴爵“無限美好版”演唱會), at National Taiwan University’s Sports Center (台大綜合體育館) on July 18. At Riverside, Yen-j will spend one set performing unplugged versions of songs from his album and the next set paying tribute to his idols, who include Jay Chou (周杰倫), Wang Lee-hom, Khalil Fong (方大同) and Stevie Wonder.
A native of Kaohsiung, Yen-j moved to the US to attend school at the age of 10. He took up piano and trombone early on and started performing in San Francisco’s jazz bars with his high school teachers.
“I did not have the typical high school years because I was busy performing,” Yen-j said in an interview earlier this week. “I was lucky to have that opportunity to perform, though.”
After high school, he moved to Los Angeles to study music at the University of Southern California. Already a prolific songwriter with a demo in hand, he made the unusual decision to withdraw from USC after his first semester and move back to Taiwan.
“I figured I would only steer away from the opportunity of becoming a [career] singer if I stay for four years in college,” Yen-j, now 22, explained. “My father was understanding enough to support my decision.”
It took Yen-j only three months to land a record contract. In January this year, he released the EP Trapped in Taipei (困在台北) and embarked on a 44-gig live-house tour throughout the country to cultivate audiences and get used to performing live alone.
“I was a jazz instrumentalist in the beginning and learned to sing later on,” Yen-j said. “Performing live wasn’t that enjoyable in the beginning because I was just learning the ropes. Gradually,
I learned to enjoy it and interact with the audiences.”
Yen-j continues writing songs every day as a way to relieve stress, even during his current hectic promotional schedule.
“Either the beat, some lyrics or a segment of melody would appear, and I continue to finish the song,” he said.
“I have accumulated a whole bunch of songs for the subsequent albums,”
he laughed. “But the label says they won’t listen to the new songs until I finish the promotion and concert [for] the current album.”
It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out. Bongo, opened in 1960 by
Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is “somewhat illusory.” Researchers collected statements from various sources that had been described as “common sense” and put them to test subjects. The mixed bag of results suggested there was “little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people.” It’s no surprise that there are few universally shared notions of what stands to reason. People took a horse worming drug to cure COVID! They think low-traffic neighborhoods are a communist plot and call
Over the years, whole libraries of pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) texts have been issued by commentators on “the Taiwan problem,” or the PRC’s desire to annex Taiwan. These documents have a number of features in common. They isolate Taiwan from other areas and issues of PRC expansion. They blame Taiwan’s rhetoric or behavior for PRC actions, particularly pro-Taiwan leadership and behavior. They present the brutal authoritarian state across the Taiwan Strait as conciliatory and rational. Even their historical frames are PRC propaganda. All of this, and more, colors the latest “analysis” and recommendations from the International Crisis Group, “The Widening
Sept. 30 to Oct. 6 Chang Hsing-hsien (張星賢) had reached a breaking point after a lifetime of discrimination under Japanese rule. The talented track athlete had just been turned down for Team Japan to compete at the 1930 Far Eastern Championship Games despite a stellar performance at the tryouts. Instead, he found himself working long hours at Taiwan’s Railway Department for less pay than the Japanese employees, leaving him with little time and money to train. “My fighting spirit finally exploded,” Chang writes in his memoir, My Life in Sports (我的體育生活). “I vowed then to defeat all the Japanese in Taiwan
RSS