We have discontinued our program on Live365. Instead, our mission to share Mandarin (and other Asian music) has moved to Twitter where we share a song or more every day.

Awards/Achievements:

Evonne Hsu was born in the USA about five hours from Houston Texas in the small rural town of Longview.Named Yvonne Ming Hsu, by her parents, she attracted attention at an early age as one of the few Chinese girls in her town.

Evonne grew up with a love for singing and dancing but had chosen to major in psychology at the University of Texas at Austin when a musical arranger friend convinced her to make a demo tape of her singing

The friend took the tape to Taiwan, where one executive at Core Agency (now the director at Universal Music), was so impressed that he flew to Texas to sign Evonne certain that he has found a future star.

Since she was planning to visit her Grandparents in Taipei anyway, Evonne decided to meet with the executive team at Core to discuss a contract. The meeting must have gone well. With the consent of her parents, she spent a year in Taiwan working on her Mandarin language skills while Core secured a record contract with Universal Music

Universal invested heavily in her debut album “To Be Happy” (Kuai le Wei zhu), recording in the studio for over a month and sending her to Korea to shoot her music video with the same team who had worked with Boa, SES, and Shinhwa.

The album was released in January of 2002 and sold an impressive 100,000 copies in it’s first six months. She won the “Best Newcomer Award” from Hong Kongs TVB

Evonne has always taken care to present a straight, wholesome image. I want people to like me because of my music. And considering my fans are mostly students, I want to be a good role model so their parents will have a positive opinion of me, and buy more of my albums. When selecting outfits, Hsu tends to be conservative, I have this fear that too much will be exposed by accident. Fans may take pictures and upload them onto the Internet.In 2004 she tried out a slightly racier image. On her fourth Mandarin album “Happiness”, she blends elements of tango, jazz, rock and Latin dance beats. In the music video, Da Feng Chui (Strong Wind Blowing), she wears her most revealing outfit to date – a pair of shorts. “I didn’t like it one bit as it was the first time I wore short pants. The pants also hampered dancing. This is the last time I am exposing myself like that,” she said.

Too bad!

Links:

http://www.geocities.com/rainie_starz/links.htmlhttp://stefaniesingapore.tripod.com/photogallery.html

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Bio:

Jolin began her career by taking part in the MTV singing competition while she was just 18. She won the top prize with a song “The Greatest Love of all” and was signed by Universal Music as a new singer from Taiwan.

About a year later, on July 1999, her first single “Living With the World” was released. It was sold in 7-11 stores and it was a tremendous success which led to the release of her first album on September 1999. At that time, her image was the sweet girl-next-door image and was an instant hit with teenagers, which earned her the title “Teenage Boy Killer”.

Her 1st album, “Jolin 1019″ sold more than 400,000 copies around Asia, and actually had many versions of the album out across the world. With the success of her 1st album, she released her anticipated 2nd album in May 2000, “Don’t Stop”, and many of her hits in the album are well known throughout Asia. She also released her 1st photobook that is mainly taken in Hawaii. This album was also a tremendous success. Her image changed for her third album Show Your Love. Being more matured and nearing the age of 21, it was a much soothing album with many new songs and tunes. However, the sales of this album was not at good as compared to the previous two. The fourth album, Lucky Number, did not manage to bring her back to the previous popularity she had although she tried certain new songs and many changes. She also sang the theme song for the movie Atlantis.

Then for a period of 1 year, due to problems with her record company, she did not cut any albums. However, she came out with her 2nd photobook, taken in Thailand, with a song composed by Jay Chou.  She finally managed to sign with Sony Music and got her biggest break in her whole career. Her album Magic, topped the Taiwan album charts for 3 full months and sold more than 300,000 in Taiwan alone.  This transformation gave her what she needed to make a comeback to the music scene after being gone for almost a year.  In 2004 she released her 2nd album with Sony, “Castle”, which quickly became the top album in Singapore’s RIAS charts.

- Courtesy of Jolin Fan Club Singapore
Timeline:

• March 1999 -  Signed a contract with Universal Record Company
• September 1999  – Release of Jolin>>1019 album (has 4versions)
• May 2000 – Release of Don’t Stop album (has 3versions)
• August 2000 – Release of all Jolin’s MTV on a VCD
• December 2000 – Release of Jolin’s 3rd album ‘Show Your Love’
• July 2001 – Release of Jolin’s 4th album ‘Lucky Number’ (has 2 versions)
• September 2001 – First time in Malaysia,and held 2 mini concerts
• November 2001 – First compilation album of all four albums, ‘Together’.
• March 2003 – Release of Jolin’s 5th album ‘See My 72 Changes – Magic’
• March 2004 – Release of Jolin’s 6th album ‘Castle’

Awards:

• Champion of the JingMei Secondary School singing competition
• First Runner-up of Zhongguang Music Competition
• 1998 – Champion of MTV Youngsters Singing Competition
• 1999 – Channel V Most Popular Female Newcomer award
• 1999 – “San Li” Music Station Poll Chart Most Promising Newcomer
• 1999 – TVBS Super Live Most Popular Female Artist
• 2000 – Singapore Hit Award Most Popular Newcomer (Gold)
• 2001 – New York MTV most popular Asia mtv video award
  

Links:

Official Singapore Fanclub

Jolin Our Joy Singapore

Extensive colliction of Jolin Lyrics (many pop ups)

Good article on Jolin – June 2004

Bio:

A-Mei was born in 1972 in a mountainous region of eastern Taiwan, the third youngest in a family of nine. A genuine princess, her parents were tribal leaders of the Puyuma, an aboriginal clan. Like indigenous cultures around the world, Taiwan’s natives have been displaced by an influx of settlers from Mainland China. Recently, after years of discrimination, and economic disenfranchisement, there is popular interest in the culture of Taiwan’s aborigines (who make up less than 2% of the population). This could be in large part to the fame of Hui Mei Zhang, better known to her fans as A-Mei (a name she does not use in her personal life).

Growing up, song was always a part of her daily life, apparently a trademark of the Puyuma culture. Her parents encouraged her professionally and in 1994 she competed, and took first prize, on the televised “Five Lights Singing Contest. Soon she began performing in Taipei with her cousin’s rock band “Relax” and began to develop a fan base who started referring to her as A-Mei.

IT was after singing the theme song for a TV show that she landed her first record contract with the small record company, Forward Music. Popular male singer, Zhang Yu-Sheng sought her out for a duet, “The One Who Loved Me Most, Hurt Me The Most,” and shortly thereafter her first album, Jei Mei was released in 1996.

Within two weeks the first single, “Sister”, hit #3 on the Taiwan pop charts and stayed there for several weeks, an almost unheard of overnight success.

On May 20,2000 A-Mei was invited to sing Taiwan’s ‘national’ anthem at the inauguration ceremony of President Chen Shui-bian. Without realizing the repercussions, she accepted.

For any Taiwanese singer, the biggest most accessible market for their music is mainland China. China wants reunification with Taiwan, and those opposed to the idea are harshly criticized and called “splitters”. A-Mei’s singing of Taiwan’s national anthem was seen as a political declaration in support of Taiwanese independence. A-mei claims to be completely apolitical and was surprised at the reaction, including being banned from performing in China.

After two years, the ban was lifted. Nevertheless, A-Mei’s tour of China in August 2004 was plagued with protesters demanding that she sing the Chinese National anthem. One concert had to be cancelled and A-mei broke down in tears at her Beijing appearance saying, The pressure I felt for this concert is 1,000 times greater than past concerts.