Have been listening to some sino pop, strangely nothing to do with the Olympics. Just the usual thing where I hear one good tune on YouTube and then I follow the links - suddenly, it’s already lunch and I have no work done. But the Olympics is a good excuse I guess. So today and for the next few days, I’ll post a series of popular canto and taiwo pop music videos. Some are very catchy, others I like despite myself. Anyway, you can be the judge…
First up, Taiwanese born Jay Chou’s Fearless from the martial arts movie of the same name. And yes, apparently that IS him doing a falsetto duet with himself. Love it.
A friend from work lent me a copy of the Ruby Suns‘ eponymous album, really lovely melodious stuff - with hints of everything from the Beach Boys to Interpol. I love!
They are led by a man whose real name, apparently, is Ryan McPhun. They are a NZ band but Mr McFun hails from California. They have a MySpace and a selection of video goodies on YouTube.
And a film someone made of them doing Criterion in Paris (”Paris was grey, The Ruby Suns just arrived from a sunny place… They were free, they played in the city like they would haved on the beach. The only thing missing was a barbecue…”):
The album art is really pretty too - the cd itself has these bright colourful balloons all over it - makes me happy just looking at it whenever I go to play it.
Who knew he was such a good dancer before Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice clip? I always suspected he could fly though.
There some silly versions of this - Benny Hill and YMCA mashups. It’s also spawned a number of imitators, quite understandably - it’s a pretty cool dance.
Bonds seem to have taken over the reins from Just Jeans and Portmans in having brilliant music dependent ads. One of their most recent ones is this fun Kaleidoscope commercial:
Okay, maybe there might be sadder videos out there but this one is still pretty sad. I can’t work out who it’s sadder for, but the dancing is pretty slick. It’s the Avalanches “Since I left you“.
Shmulik Krauss and Josie Katz singing something, no idea what it is because I don’t speak Hebrew, but I like it - it’s folky and sounds like a few other songs mixed up but probably isn’t. Who knows?
