Chinese pop music

As I have been trying to improve my Mandarin, I have been listening to Chinese pop music. Most of the stuff I find consists of schmaltzy ballads, the accompanying videos containing pretty people doing vaguely romantic things in soft focus. Here are some exceptions to that pattern.

陈珊妮 Sandee Chan

Sandee Chan is a Taiwanese singer, producer, song-writer, painter, and book author — and also the owner of a web site that has some pages in English.

I love you, John

卡奇社 Carrchy

If the first video was poppy modern, this second one is a collection of timeless images of China. It is taken from a film and set in Suzhou, a city famous for its beautiful canals and gardens.

游园惊梦 - Visit the garden and awaken from a dream

This is another video from Carrachy. I love the gritty, lo-fi filming style.

日光倾城 Sunshine all over

曹芳 Icy

Continuing the grungy video theme, a million miles away from the schmaltzy ballads.

黑色香水 Black perfume

薛凯琪 Fiona Sit

Slick modern, Cantonese pop, with a slightly Chinese aesthetic, from Hong Kong singer and actress Fiona Sit.

唇印 Lipstick

Chinese words have to be sung, with proper rising and falling tones, for them to be understood correctly and I wondered occasionally how the speech melody is related to the musical melody. Before posting this entry, I googled the answer (wordreference forums). Normally, in pop songs the musical melody erases the speech melody. Only with important phrases, do songwriters try to make the musical melody match the natural speech one. Cantonese songwriters do this more often. So I imagine at least the first line in the refrain in the last video has the two melodies in sync. It is very catchy.