Jay Chou is 39 years old. But the man who is approaching his untimely death is singing about, well, youth.
Before his birthday on Jan. 18, Jay's birthday wish was for a single, and at the time he joked, "If I can't do it...forget it!"
The result was that at 00:00 on his birthday, Jay released his latest single, "Waiting for You to Get Out of Class". The lyrics and music, both by Jay Chou.
"Waiting for You to Get Out of Class" is about a young man who regrets that he didn't study hard enough to get into the same university as the girl he likes, so he rents an apartment near the girl and silently waits for her, playing the piano and writing love letters for her.
The song, literate, healing, campus, sweet abuse, still Jay, or rather, it is more like the work of the Jay who just debuted. And this year, Jay Chou also debuted 18 years ago.
I don't know when it started, saying that Jay Chou is our youth became a very rotten thing, but people don't mind vulgarity, and they still say it.
The singer, who was disdained by many grown-ups when he debuted, has sung 464 songs in 18 years and remains powerfully original, not only pioneering the Chinese style of Chinese music, but those early hip-hop songs not only don't sound outdated now, they even still sound fresh.
More importantly, compared to those hip-hop songs full of women's drugs, "Listen to Your Mother" is simply doing Chinese hip-hop justice in advance.
When Jay was born in Taipei on Jan. 18, 1979, his mother, Amy Yip, probably wouldn't have imagined that the kid would be a hit for so many years in the Chinese music scene.
And in his 39 years of life, Jay's music, and his person, have influenced so many people, which has made Jay's life no longer isolated, but inextricably linked to the world. These people who swiped Jay's new songs late at night on January 18th, who spoke of Jay as their youth, and who grew old with Jay, they *** with enriched Jay's life.
They may be qualified to say: Hey, that three years second class of Jay Chou stay a moment, waiting for you to get off the class yo!
Waiting for you to get out of class Jay Chou is about to turn 40
The almost 40-year-old Jay Chou sang back to his own 18 years ago.
Waiting for You to Get Out of Class, sings about what Jay's first love felt like, or rather, the first love of each of us.
As Jay himself said, "This song is a birthday gift to myself and to my fans."
The story goes that one day during a concert celebration, Jay suddenly had the melody of the song springing up in his head, and went back to his room alone to write the whole thing out, then spent another week finishing the production, and there you have it - "Waiting for You to Get Out of Class".
"You live in the alley I rented an apartment in order to want to meet you unexpectedly three years in high school why why I didn't study well and didn't get into the same college as you. I'm a little worried, I looked at the lights in your classroom, you haven't gotten out of class yet."
Before fans are still worried about him in the end can not be delivered as scheduled, the results are really a promise, it is said that in addition to these days Jay Chou into the studio singing, production, but also synchronized with the invitation to the illustrator to draw the lyrics version of the MV, the illustrator only three days, according to the lyrics of the storyline, depicting a picture, the MV can be seen illustrated version of the Jay Chou playing the guitar under the tree, lying in the crush on a girl's exams on the school playground looking at the starry sky...
Chou joked, "This song is actually meant to encourage fans to try to get into the same school as your favorite person!"
The joke wasn't really that bad, but a song like this would be more or less unexpected by fans, as Jay actually went back to the beginning, to his youth, with this song.
Many fans who hold the desire to listen to Jay Chou summarize his life will be about to be disappointed, "Waiting for you to get out of class" presents precisely the simplest youth, those teenagers waiting, childish defiance, once the pain in the heart, both the love was originally like, but also the youth was originally like.
Jay Chou sang the whole song is very light and light, showing a minimalist and restrained, no let a person scratch the heart of the lyrics, no let a person suffered the pain, no big full and tearful arrangement, Jay Chou do not want to do that, he is not to consume the suffering of youth, but to recall the beauty of youth.
If you use one word to describe this song, it's a very "clean" little love song, just like Jay Chou, who has been a Chinese singing superstar for 18 years.
In 18 years, he sang 464 songs, this Jay Chou, seems to be not bad
In 18 years, Jay Chou released 14 albums, sang more than 400 songs and held more than 200 concerts.
But before he became popular, Jay was probably the writer who had the most songs dropped by superstars.
"Nunchucks" was returned without hesitation by A-Mei Chang.
"Tears Know" was also trolled by Andy Lau - "Tears know, what do tears know?" The song Tears Don't Know What was later given to Wen Lan.
That underappreciated Jay Chou, if he had met a stage like The Voice, probably would have been like that for the rest of his life. But the good thing is that it was still a record era when talent shows were less popular. Jay's creativity was pretty much forced out of him by Wu Zongxian.
The story between him and Wu Zongxian is definitely better than the movie.
At the time, he signed up for an entertainment program, Super Rookie King, at the urging of his cousin.
The acting could be described as deadly bad, but the original work attracted the attention of judge Wu Zongxian, so he asked the man to work as a music assistant in his music company, responsible for writing songs.
As a result, just as Jay started writing, Wu called Jay to his office in person, told him the song he wrote sucked, and threw it in the waste paper pocket.
The stories of awesome people are probably a bit legendary. As it turned out, when Wu walked into his office the next morning, the young man's new score was already on his desk, and on the third and fourth day, it continued to be there.
One night Wu Zongxian returned to the studio, but as soon as he went in, he saw a man lying on the ground and was startled, but it turned out to be Jay Chou.
In the end, he was also shocked by the silent young man.
By December 1999, there was the famous ten-day contract: if Jay could write 50 songs, Wu would help him choose 10 of them for a record.
By, late 2000, the album that was honored was Jay's debut album, Jay. To be honest I'm particularly curious to know what the scrapped 40 songs were.
You've probably heard a lot of the songs on this album, such as "Star Love," "Black Humor," "Tornado," and Jay's first Chinese-inspired song, "Maiden," the song "Old Indian Turtle Dove," which still doesn't sound dated when you listen to it now.
The album also marked the emergence of Jay Chou.
The album won three awards that year, including Taiwan's best pop vocal album, best producer and best songwriter.
With his second album next, Jay turned into a tornado. It was the one you all know so well, "Vantage Point".
Listen to the songs and you'll know, "Love Before the Western Era" Fong gave it a small try, "Simple Love" opened up Zhou's love song style, and "Can't Open My Mouth" still fires up the ktvs to this day.
The third album was Octave, which actually wasn't bad at all in terms of quality but the next one was just so awesome that it was hidden from the public.
The fourth album was Ye Huimei, which officially kicked off the Chinese style era with "East Wind Break".
It was after this album that Jay not only became the third Chinese singer to appear on the cover of Time magazine after Faye Wong River Zhang Huimei, but also landed on CCTV's Spring Festival Gala, a Chinese icon who has become unstoppable.
But more importantly, when we go back to listening to these Jay songs, we realize that he turned out to be really early to throw off some of the hip-hop red stars who are good at going home with their sisters hundreds of streets.
"Listen to Your Mother" speaks of filial piety in the most traditional sense of Chinese culture.
"Dad I'm Home" is about domestic violence.
"Stop the War, Stop the Grief" calls for world peace.
"Snail" encourages young people to be upwardly mobile, and the song was later incorporated into primary and secondary school textbooks.
The song is about how to face the low points of life.
"Terraces" tells us to protect the environment.
"Blue and White Porcelain" could have been used as the theme song for CCTV's "National Treasure".
Behind these songs, it turns out, hides a Jay who is so rich and so positive, and whom the times misunderstood back then.
But even geniuses such as Jay, probably can not escape the cyclical law of music, the 11th album "Exclamation Point", released on November 11, 2011, the Hanukkah, became one of Jay's most questioned albums. Fans could hear that the melodies weren't as good as they had been back then, and critics were all over the place, questioning whether Jay had written anything new.
Later, "12 New Works" and "Jay's Bedtime Stories" were probably just a slow rebound, but still not the peak of Jay.
The golden age of belonging to the record, too, is passing, with sales of "Transgression" at 5 percent of what they were for "Vantage Point" at its peak.
Jay Chou, is it really not working?
Why isn't Jay getting old? Why are we still waiting for him to step down?
Actually, people, they do get old after all.
Especially for musicians, it's almost impossible to keep originality at its peak for the rest of your life.
The Jay Chou of the past few years has always had one or two songs per album, such as "Confession Balloon" from Bedtime Stories, but it's no longer like back in the day, when the whole album was a classic.
There's nothing to be ashamed to admit about this.
Jay Chou, more than anything else, has become Mentor Jay.
Previously, there are media reports, Jay Chou originally intended to follow Na Ying left the "New Voice", and then by the program unit to open a high price to retain, the pay per episode of 2 million yuan increased to about 3.2 million yuan, the result is to let Jay Chou become the most senior mentor of the old music variety show.
Senior mentor, this is probably something that Jay, who was a teenager working in a restaurant early in the morning and often playing songs for customers, did not expect.
But Jay, is still the same Jay he was back then.
The man, clearly, still retains the teenage heart of that year.
He would sing "Red Dust Inn" at a concert especially for a 70-year-old fan because the old man said he liked his Chinese style. Well, this is something that is very much like something Jay would do.
When he met a fan on the road for an autograph, he stood there and walked his dog for him while he waited for him to go back for his book.
Going to a Mayday concert as a guest of honor, he would find his own terrier and say, "A lot of my fans would say that Jay is their youth and Mayday is their life, and I seldom listen to anyone else's songs but Mayday's." Then he said he wanted to form a group with Mayday, "Friday", and finally "Friday" performed the first single "Double Cut Stick" live.
But again, he's clearly grown into an adult.
Jay Chou married Kun Ling on his birthday, January 18, 2015, in Europe. Let the netizens are talking about what this woman is entitled to, as long as he likes, he gave this woman the best wedding. European castles, princes and princesses, he personally played the piano.