Share this:

Jay Chou, Jay, 2000

Jay Chou, Jay, 2000

ranking: #24 on 1993-2005 list

“Whoo!”  So starts “Adorable Woman” (可愛女人), the first track off of the first album by wunderkind pop idol Jay Chou (周杰倫).  At once cheesy and downright breathtaking, the exaltation of romantic bliss announces the arrival of what is soon to be Taiwan’s most celebrated music star.  No wispy guitar, no virtuosic piano, no synthetic dance beat.  Just a burst of pop cool.  One word in, and you already know if you’re going to hate Jay the sua ku poseur or be taken away by Jay the freshest talent in Taiwanese pop since Lo Ta-yu.

When Chou’s debut Jay (周杰倫) first came out, the 21-year-old was heralded as a musical genius as composer, pianist, and possibly vocalist.  The original album cover and liner notes depict him as something of a music nerd, the loner who would rather talk about chords and influences than most anything else.  For many in Taiwan, this is the Jay Chou they choose to remember, and Jay is the only Jay Chou album they’ll admit to liking.  Which isn’t surprising, given that there was nothing before that sounded quite like it, and that afterward, there were countless albums imitating it, including Chou’s own subsequent records.

Thematically there’s little new here (love, love, and love), and it’s perhaps less daring than Chou’s later work.  But there’s something about the construction that has even skeptics agreeing that the usual sentimentality is coded in a vernacular that’s far more ambitious than the standard pop.  “Tornado” (龍捲風) twists Vivian Hsu’s trite lyrics into a rhythmic and melodic cyclone that gives sonic form to the song title.  “Perfection” (完美主義) ends with a strange chant of Jay’s name over and over — it can’t quite be explained as a “what’s my name?” boast, or seemingly by any other logic.  Yet it makes complete sense in a track composed of cell phone rings and equally strange chatter by a voice whose hard-to-place accent is something like Jamaican Chinese.  The sonic collage continues with the rubber-on-basketball court screeching of “Bullfight” (鬥牛), a more straightforward street boast whose staccato verses would be legitimately threatening if not for the fairly tame lyrics by regular Chou collaborator Vincent Fang (方文山).

It’s become a cliche to note the way Chou slurs syllables in his fast songs, and unfortunately, such claims have simplified Chou’s musical accomplishment.  The final track “Counter-clockwise Clock” (反方向的鐘) features lyrics so frivolously sung that I could not make out a single line without the help of the lyrics sheet.  Yet the moods of the song are perfectly clear.  It’s a bit of an abstract song to begin with, as it starts with Chou singing the Chinese “ABCs,” perhaps conjuring a sense of fated directionality (it goes “bo po mo fo” not “fo mo po bo”).  The first verse is a mesmerizing onslaught of four-character mumbles in 16 monotonous iterations.  With the bridge we get some tonal variation, but more importantly, longer phrases that break from the four-character structure of the opening verse.  Then, in the chorus, we’re back to the four-character form, only to escape it in a transcendent emancipation from time.

Much has also been made of Chou’s rapping style, and I will save more specific comments on Chou’s innovation for a future post.  But I must mention the brilliant “Wife” (娘子), a concoction of classical Chinese imagery spun together as a hip-hop ode.  The anguished way Chou spouts the title words “niang zi” in the rap intro is simultaneously street-whipped swagger and Chinese tragedy theatrics.  When Chou shifts into singing, the delivery is as rhythmic and rapid as the rap.  Again, the lyrics are indecipherable.  All we can make out is a smattering of classical images (a willow tree, a jug of wine, a river, a red bean) delivered as a postmodern blast of lyricism with 21st century cool.  The rap-singing overlapping at the end of the song tops off the awesomeness with even more awesomeness.  That sort of excess is just Jay’s way.

There are great romantic moments as well.  “Black Humor” (黑色幽默) is one of Jay’s all-time best ballads and shows him stretching his vocal range more than any of his songs have since.  “Starry Mood” (星晴) has pretty uninspired lyrics, written by Chou himself, but corralled into a killer sing-along chorus with ascending melody (“Hand in hand, one step two step three step four step toward the sky / Up above, one star two star three star four star strung together”), Chou is invincible.  And then there’s that memorable opening track, “Adorable Woman,” which has a similar uptempo which depicts young love as a cocksure strut.  As the narrator of his songs, Jay Chou rarely reveals vulnerability, and that confidence — whether as lover, basketball player, etc. — is set to propel Chou forward as a musical force of uncommon creativity.

Advertisement