tornado

(Credit: Love is like a Tornado by dumbLilchild on DA)

At this moment, I’m listening to Jay Chou’s “Long Juan Feng” (Tornado) while drinking milk tea and trying for the life of me, to memorize the lyrics.  Not an easy task since Jay Chou is (in)famous for mumbling his lyrics. Sometimes my mom will hear one of his songs come up on my iTunes and shake her head; “I have no idea what that boy’s saying, why is he so popular?”

And (putting this out there now) even though my Mandarin is far from passable and my taste in music can sometimes be questionable (embarrassing Japanese boyband music, anyone?), I would like to think that I know good music when I hear it . And even more, I know great lyrics when I read them. :D

Sometimes, English translations can be a bit lacking– which is a shame since I rely on them a lot for my foreign music comprehension. With Mandarin, I can usually rely on myself to figure out most songs and use the English translation as a guide. If anything, it’s a good way of expanding my vocab.

In this song, I love the bridge.  静静悄悄默默离开/jing jing qiao qiao mo mo li kai which translates to “quietly, stealthily, silently leaving”– all the rhyming, two-syllable words really “clicked” for me. That and the subtle change from 爱情来的太快就像龙卷风 (”love comes too quickly just like a tornado”) and 爱情走的太快就像龙卷风 (”love passes too quickly, just like a tornado”).

It really isn’t a surprise that Jay Chou has a huge fan base in Asia.

And okay, maybe my mom has a point with Jay Chou’s music. Sometimes Jay Chou fans are… well, insane, for a  lack of a better word. A few are fanatical as some fans can be, my cousin (whom I haven’t met since I was twelve) being one of them. Apparently my cousin in Fuzhou went to one of his concerts and shook his hand and told my her mother (my Aunt Judy) that she would never wash that hand again. Riiiiight.  Jay’s music can sometimes be very much alike which isn’t necessarily a bad thing– but when I bought his November’s Chopin album and after listening to all the songs and my first impression was “… wait, these are new?”

His music can sometimes be overrated too, the same way how some Japanese music fans regard Ayumi Hamasaki to the be the best thing to come out of Japan since Hello Kitty. Not that I don’t like Ayumi Hamasaki’s music because I do (I especially like her song Moments because the lyrics are poignant, sharp, and I liked her use of metaphor– Ayu writes her own lyrics) but many of her songs are a bit lackluster to me.

Anyway, got way off on that tangent there.

This is song I’ve been obsessed with lately. And it’s the song that my parents probably hate right now.

If anything, you have to admit that the composition, at least, is beautiful.

God help me if I turn into a Jay Chou fangirl like my cousin. I may just commit seppuku with the aid of a plastic spork.