One Day in May…

The Music Radio China Top of the Chart Awards were held last weekend, and I’m delighted to say that Mayday won “best album” from Hong Kong or Taiwan. They were also named favorite band (“best” band went to sodagreen), and “You’re Not Truly Happy” was one of the top ten songs of the year. Leehom was another big winner, with “Heartbeat” in the best songs, plus awards for best producer and best male artist. Cowboy Jay got passed over on the major writing/producing/best artist/best album awards, and took a song award for the only half-way decent track off his last album, the forgettable “Fragrant Rice,” and a slightly dodgy prize for “best-selling artist,” which I’m choosing to interpret as “well, your last album pretty much sucked, but a whole lot of people bought it,” though you might read that differently. Incidentally, Xu Wei was a big winner from the mainland, with awards for best male artist, best album, and one of the best songs from the mainland. I loved his release last year, Love Like Youth (爱如少年), so I’d like to throw out a hearty “yay!” to him.

Okay, what else… we’re in that rough time of every year, when half of the “五月天” articles out there are actually about May Day, not Mayday (or about that dodgy x-rated May Day site). But, I’ve persisted in my Googling and learned that Mayday was back in Shanghai promoting BenQ and their July concert this past weekend. As a band, they’re a bit mainstream for rock, but a bit rock for mainstream music; at the very least, they have their own way of doing things. Blah, blah, blah, okay, this article is the “here’s some news about a band you’ve never heard of” variety, that doesn’t suit those of us who are already fans (case in point, it points out that Mayday actually writes its own music. Shocker!). Anywho, certain BenQ purchases during the May Day holiday will score the buyer a ticket to the summer concert (within certain hours and up to a certain number of ticket, limit of one ticket per customer, restrictions apply, all rights reserved, etc.).

Side note: there are lots of pictures there, and I would just like to commend Ashin on his continuing good choices in pants. Do not let it be said that I only ever talk about his clothes when there’s a problem….

Here’s something random and fun: Jolin is doing her own campus tour to promote her new album, but she’s finding that student music allowances have all already been spent on Mayday albums. Heh. She’s apparently having some trouble building momentum for the new album after fighting (apparently successfully) against plagiarism charges when it was first released. (I haven’t seen anything about that, actually.)

A pink-haired Qingfeng and sodagreen was out promoting the new album and environmental awareness recently. Now, that video was in Chinese, but here’s one in English on the general issue of Mandopop coming out of Taiwan. I actually do not really agree with it on the issue of the role of pop music in cross-straits relations, but that’s not the important thing. What is important is that it mentions that sodagreen is about to put out an album and embark on a two-year world tour, including a stop in… LA. As in California. Stay tuned….

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 8:21 pm and is filed under Cowboy Jay, Leehom Wang, Mayday, Sodagreen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.