Mando-pop siren Penny Tai (戴佩妮) intends to reinvigorate her career tonight with an unplugged concert titled Singing at Home (在家裡唱歌) at Legacy Taipei. And as the show has already sold out, the future looks bright for the Malaysian-born starlet.
Tai is no stranger to starting anew. Right after performing a new song during her Who Exactly Am I (我到底是誰) concert in 2008, Tai cut her long mane off on stage in front of a 2,000-strong audience before announcing, “today is the last day of the first half of my life.”
“That was my good-bye because I was a person who dwelt on the past. I was pessimistic,” Tai said during a telephone interview on Monday. “I want to live in the moment.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF ENJOY MUSIC
One of Mando-pop’s most acclaimed singer/songwriters, Tai is known for her rock-infused pop and won a Golden Melody Award for Best Composer for her song Crazy in Love (愛瘋了) in 2006.
“My songs were mostly biographical,” Tai said. “These days, if I need to write a love song, I will write about other people’s experiences.”
Tai took a break from her career to form a band, D-Power, in 2007 and ventured into digital singles (with eight releases to date) in 2008.
Lacking a marketing budget, she took up photography to produce her own publicity material.
From photography she went on to direct music videos, and made her directorial debut with Jody Chiang’s (江蕙) hit single Ga Li Lum Diao Diao (甲你攬牢牢) in 2008, and received two Golden Melody Award nominations last year for best video direction for the music videos to label mate A-bin’s (方炯鑌) Wind (風) and for R ’n’ B crooner Khalil Fong’s (方大同) Black and White (黑白).
Tai is also a professional dancer with 11 years of training.
“If I am not a pop star, I could be a mother, a teacher or a MV director too,” the multitalented artist said.
On the Net: www.iampenny.idv.tw
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