Music Obsessions – May 2019

Welcome to the next Music Obsessions!

Its been a long and tough month with a lot of music by my side. There were quite a few new discoveries and I really had a lot of fun just listening to a lot of new stuff. However, I’m keeping it fairly constricted here to keep things on track plus, some of the music I’ll leave for next month if its still on my list. 😉

Evidence 證據 – 楊乃文 Naiwen Yang

The Singer 2019 revealed me to Naiwen Yang who is a Taiwanese singer more in the indie vein. Her music is pretty good and while she isn’t the more popular choice in the competition, this song that she performed is really good. The lyrics and the vibe of it all is the style that I personally like.

Expose 揭穿 – 黄子韬 Z. Tao

My recent obsession in terms of TV series has to be The Brightest Star in the Sky. Its about to end but the last few weeks watching it is just great. Plus, it tells the story of a singer trying to be recognized for his talent and not just his appearances. I feel like there’s a lot of similarities to the main male lead in reality however, it shows off a lot of his own music outside of his EXO days. One of my fave songs in the TV series is this one.

两人份美好 – 李俊毅 (Ending theme of “Put Your Head On My Shoulder”)

The other series I’m really into these days is Put Your Head On My Shoulder, a series spinoff from A Love So Beautiful (review) which adapts another story from the original source’s author. I love the ending theme a lot. Its cute and fun and they did a music video with snippets of the series which I think is worth sharing.

Wait a Minute – 乐华七子NEXT

I’ve been going back to check out how some young groups and celebrities started off from last year’s Idol Producer show and while the winners of the show ended up being Nine Percent boy group. One of the entertainment companies, Yuehua Entertainment ended up putting together their 7 competitors who made it pretty far in the show into their own group, which is pretty awesome since they are each very talented in their domain, whether vocal, rap or dance but also quite well-rounded to be able to do a decent job in their other areas as well. Either way, this song is fun.

装模作样 Pretending – 摩登兄弟刘宇宁 Liu Yuning

So..I’m not watching this series but I like the singer, Yuning Liu who sings this one and because of that, I like the song, the lyrics and the rhythm of it all. There isn’t a huge reason behind it. I found this song randomly and spontaneously.

That’s it for this music obsessions!
What have you been listening to lately?

Music Obsessions – March 2019

Time is flying by as we head into March and its time to share some more music that I’ve been listening to in the past month. I’m not sure that I have anything particularly new but then I’m still watching The Singer 2019 and that is charging up most of my playlist. Then that inspired to watch Super-Vocal then the other half is charged with this music. Then there’s the random song from movies and soundtracks and such. I do hope you enjoy! 🙂

Perfume – Jason Zhang

As my husband graciously puts it, this guy is like Chinese Charlie Puth. Well, like ten years Puth’s senior probably but the style of music definitely works in the same way. Especially as his song sparked the whole “perfume dance”. You will know what I mean when you watch the video. Its fairly entertaining. There’s a lot of serious music in this music obsessions so I decided to start off on a light and fun mood with this pick which has subconsciously playing in some variety show backgrounds until I heard the song.

She Is My Sin – Neil Gao 高天鹤

As one of three (I think) countertenors on Super Vocal, there is no doubt that this song shows off the perfect mash of modern music and operatic style as Neil Gao shows off his skills and his masterful control of his voice whether using his countertenor range or his normal vocal range. This performance is definitely one of the most unique in the show and showed off this new side of Neil Gao to be one of my faves.

超能守护神 Super Protector -TeamSpark

My Amazing Boyfriend 2 is my main TV series lately. Its so much fun to watch and those 6 episodes released per week truly make me so happy. With that said, the theme song isn’t quite as catchy as the the first but I still really like it a lot. It matches the vibe of the show so much.

雪花的快乐 The Happiness of Snowflakes – 黄子弘凡 Lars &方书剑Shujian Fang&梁朋杰 Pengjie Liang&张超Zhang Chao

The Greatest Show – 刘宪华Henry Lau&郑云龙Yunlong Zheng&张超Zhang Chao&方书剑ShuJian Fang&黄子弘凡Lars&梁朋杰Pengjie Liang

I couldn’t choose so I decided to just do a two in one deal. To be honest, I’d have done a 3 in 1 deal because its so fantastic. The 4 guys in Super-Vocal did two quartets together and they called themselves the 1975 group which was because their average age is 19.75 years old. This one was the latter one and I thought it was pretty good although the first one had more energy and a catchier song, still this one was more poetic. Its nice to see how they’re confidence changed from the first performance to the final one when they were joined by one of the judges, Henry Lau and their more experienced musical actor teammate, Yunlong Zheng. I haven’t watched The Greatest Showman yet (I know, shame on me), but I love the energy and confidence in this performance. Its one of my faves.

心脏 Heart – Super-Vocal Team

Last week’s The Singer 2019 was a nightmare for one of the members of this team and yet, the song they chose is from one of Chinese musicals. I’ve only heard it and never saw it. They do such a great job even with one having a huge flu or bronchitis or something. After watching the Super-Vocal show, I’m actually even more appreciative of their performances. Their voices are truly amazing. I think this quartet is absolutely fantastic.

As an extra…here’s a solo performance by Yunlong Zheng, probably one of my faves from the show:

That’s it for this Music Obsessions!
Few more English songs than I though there was which is great!
What have you been listening to?

What’s Up Week 2: Everything in Progress

Week 2 has definitely slowed down from the previous week. Mostly work and overtime has consumed a lot of my life and then there’s the whole getting sick part which zapped a lot of my energy, motivation and concentration. With that said, the weekend was a lot of trying to catch up with stuff and get things back on track. It is inevitable to have slow weeks here and there and this is definitely one of them.

On the note of structure of What’s Up in terms of written and video, I’ve decided to do a monthly video wrap-up which means it’ll be like a month look back and what I did and highlight the stuff that I thought stood out. At the same time, it’ll give me time to sort out some more in-depth video content probably like adaptation compare and contrast or something like remake and original comparison, etc. It really depends on what I find fun and if research is required, gives me time to put something together as well.

READING

• The Penultimate Peril (A Series of Unfortunate Events #12)

Currently reading: The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events #13)

I’m really close to finishing The End of A Series of Unfortunate Events however, I’m still working through the last few chapters of the book. However, it has been quite a fun read. Its nice especially since I get to compare and contrast to the TV series and I have to say that it might be a nice approach to talk about how the changes benefits (or not) when I finish.

PLAYING

Currently playing: Tsioque

Gaming has been a tad slow. It is to be expected as games take time to finish and I don’t usually sit down for hours playing them anyways. However, I am working through some back catalogue of keys we got that needs to be reviewed so I went ahead and started playing this point and click hand drawn animated game called Tsioque (pronounced “chiock”) and its surprisingly fun. Really looking forward to getting back to it and finishing it up.

WATCHING

• Blade
• Bone Tomahawk

I’m starting to prepare for the next Movies and Tea episode despite our previous one still in editing. However, I personally feel to look at Blade 2 would require watching the trilogy from the beginning so that is what I’m starting to do since I’ve never actually watched further than the first movie anyways so its a good opportunity to get that done. After that, we went ahead and finally watched Bone Tomahawk. My husband was sold on the Western, horror and Kurt Russell elements so that is how that choice was settled. Its a pretty good one. I’m not much for the Western film pacing so that was my main issue with a part of it. The review for that is coming up soon.

BINGING

Currently binging: Who’s the Murderer (Season 4); Meteor Garden (2018) rewatch; My Little One (Season 2); My Amazing Boyfriend (2016); The Singer 2019; Ugly Delicious (rewatch)

I’m refraining from finishing anything new until I get some TV binges together. However, all the currently binging stuff is pretty straight forward. Who’s the Murderer will have their final episode next week, I believe. The just did part one of the final case and its pretty mind-boggling and fun to decipher. Definitely looking forward to part 2 this week. My Little One (Season 2) and The Singer 2019 will be my focus in terms of variety shows since they are new and pretty fun to watch. One talks about family and communication and society perspectives in China towards girls and the other is a singing competition between known singers. I only have 5 episodes left to finish off My Amazing Boyfriend so thats definitely moving along at a good speed and I’m enjoying it quite a bit while I took a slight break on Meteor Garden last week (and most TV stuff) to just catch up with other things in life. I test run a few new series but can’t say that I’m at the starting it officially point yet so not including those here. In terms of rewatches, I started up Ugly Delicious again as I realized that I never wrote the binge for that one.

That’s it for Week 2 recap!
Mostly everything is just in progress and not much has been done. With anything like this, next week should look much more inspiring. 😉