Pop singer, songwriter and producer Yen-j (嚴爵) will perform a concert titled Yen-j: Y3 Original Composition Concert (嚴爵Y3全創作演唱會) at Legacy Taipei tomorrow in support of his newly released third album, Simple Love (單細胞).
“I’m not an idol. I’m an ordinary person,” Yen-j told the Taipei Times last week. “I fall in love and live a life just like everyone else. I want to share this with the audience through music.”
The talented singer and songwriter shot to instant stardom with his pop/jazz debut Thanks Your Greatness (謝謝你的美好) in 2010. His 2011 follow-up album, Not Alone (不孤獨), veered towards pop, while Simple Love ventures into electronica.
Photo Courtesy of B’in Music
With the title track Simple Love, he returns to ground zero by singing a love song with a simple melody and unadorned vocals. In Temporary Boyfriend (暫時的男朋友), another track, Yen-j passionately avows that he is willing to be the “rebound” boyfriend for his beloved.
“Electronica is the ‘in’ thing these days,” he said. “But I try to do it differently, by blending folk melodies with pulsating beats.”
Yen-j is versed in at least five instruments, including jazz piano, guitar, bass, drum and trombone.
“I explore the instruments by myself and slowly get the hang of it,” he said.
Similar to pop singer Nylon Chen (陳乃榮), Yen-j calls himself a zhainan (宅男, a euphemism for a nerdy person who spends all his waking hours playing video games), because he spends “95 percent” of his life on music.
Yen-j began his career performing in San Francisco jazz bars while still in high school, spent one short semester at university, and then dived headlong into a pop star career in Taiwan. “I haven’t even been to a bar and got drunk yet,” he laughed.
“I write music every day as if it’s my diary,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s a one minute-ditty. Sometimes, it becomes a single.”
June 9 to June 15 A photo of two men riding trendy high-wheel Penny-Farthing bicycles past a Qing Dynasty gate aptly captures the essence of Taipei in 1897 — a newly colonized city on the cusp of great change. The Japanese began making significant modifications to the cityscape in 1899, tearing down Qing-era structures, widening boulevards and installing Western-style infrastructure and buildings. The photographer, Minosuke Imamura, only spent a year in Taiwan as a cartographer for the governor-general’s office, but he left behind a treasure trove of 130 images showing life at the onset of Japanese rule, spanning July 1897 to
One of the most important gripes that Taiwanese have about the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is that it has failed to deliver concretely on higher wages, housing prices and other bread-and-butter issues. The parallel complaint is that the DPP cares only about glamor issues, such as removing markers of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) colonialism by renaming them, or what the KMT codes as “de-Sinification.” Once again, as a critical election looms, the DPP is presenting evidence for that charge. The KMT was quick to jump on the recent proposal of the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) to rename roads that symbolize
On the evening of June 1, Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) apologized and resigned in disgrace. His crime was instructing his driver to use a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon. The Control Yuan is the government branch that investigates, audits and impeaches government officials for, among other things, misuse of government funds, so his misuse of a government vehicle was highly inappropriate. If this story were told to anyone living in the golden era of swaggering gangsters, flashy nouveau riche businessmen, and corrupt “black gold” politics of the 1980s and 1990s, they would have laughed.
In an interview posted online by United Daily News (UDN) on May 26, current Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) was asked about Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) replacing him as party chair. Though not yet officially running, by the customs of Taiwan politics, Lu has been signalling she is both running for party chair and to be the party’s 2028 presidential candidate. She told an international media outlet that she was considering a run. She also gave a speech in Keelung on national priorities and foreign affairs. For details, see the May 23 edition of this column,
RSS