First post but not an intro
It is most interesting that my first post here is going to be a music challenge based one, that too more than a year after I joined the blockchain. I know introduction posts are the way to go. However I made that mistake last Dec and got so caught up in trying to create a perfect, complete, and transparent introduction that I ended up not posting at all. So I am going to skip that for now. Will circle back to it sometime in the future. 😉
So here's me jumping onto a running train and seeing which way the rails take me 😜
Speaking of music
Coming back to the music, I have been enjoying the #threetunetuesday posts quite a bit these past few days, and I could not resist jumping in. Hat-tip to @ablaze for initiating it and running it consistently for the last 133 weeks! I can only hope for a small percentage of such consistency.
My contribution for the #ttt are three Asian pop tunes, all of them featured in the fantastic Taiwanese romcom series Love Cuisine.
I have been a fan of globalization, and the internet, cause as far as I am concerned it brings people together. Yes, I know it can, and does, fan extremism of all kinds across the board. But the freedom it gives people to be who they want to be, and allowing them access to others of their tribe across geographical, political, and religious boundaries is simply fantastic.
One such fruit of globalization of media has been access to media programming from across the globe. My better half loves Korean fare and some Chinese too; and I am a great fan of Japanese stuff. One of our combined favorties was this fantastic Taiwanese show called Love Cuisine (this is the English name on Netflix - the Mandarin name translates to Cuisine High School Students according to Wikipedia). It had a great soundtrack and three of the songs stood out to me, and has been a part of my musical playlist since 2018-19.
Three Tunes:
1. Why Not Love by Rosie Yang with Ryan Yu.
The first song is by an US artist of Taiwanese descent Rosie Yang. Afaik the other artist in the song is Chinese singer Ryan Yu (Chinese name - Yu Feng ). I believe it appears as the ending theme of this entertaining series.
I absolutely love the composition of this song, how it ebbs and flows and builds up and slows down. Even though I don't understand Mandarin, the song feels like a fun romantic slice of life banter between two lover/friends. The tempo and beat make this a great start of the day song for me. For those interested this site (https://asianeuphoria.com/2016/01/10/lyrics-rosie-yang-kai-lin-and-yu-feng-why-not-love/) has the lyrics and English translation.
2. We Are Young by Dino Lee
This is the opening theme of Love Cuisine. Powerful and fun - brings to mind scholastic fun, summer days with friends, energy of youth, and general mischief that we could only do with friends. I don't even know if the lyrics have anything to do with that, but the song transports me to that feeling.
I believe this song has been picked up for multiple media, including a movie too. So I am not sure if the video is from a different movie/serial or the actual video of the song. But it is fun :) Hope you enjoy it.
3. Love More by Bii
For me Why Not Love is a romantic up-tempo conversational dance tune, and We Are Young is the fun coming of age group of friends having a good time. However a good romcom needs an anchoring romantic number and in this series the heart of the serial is this song for me - Love More by a truly eclectic star Bii. This song therefore becomes the main romantic theme that gets inserted at various parts of the series. (Note: the video below is not from the series but rather a video created for the song itself.)
I love the sweetness of this song, almost makes me remember Michael Jacksons vocals at times. Again there is interesting ebb and flow in the music and the singing, all working towards knitting a beautiful romantic blanket of love. I particularly like how the artist has used languages creatively, keeping the main song in Mandarin, lilting along melodiously till he suddenly breaks into a wild rap in Korean. (Side note: This song introduced me to the term "Sarangh Hae" - with the song very helpfully explaining that it means "I love you") 😍
Thank you
Thank you for joining me in listening to these beautiful creations. Even know as I listen to these songs as I write this post I feel like I am back in my early twenties with an open horizon and no worries burdening me. I hope you like these three songs as much as I love them. Do tell me what you think of them? What they make you feel?
As usual the disclaimer: I am sharing the videos as they appear on YouTube under the fair use dictum to help spread good music information to all.
If you are interested in the artists their pages are at
- Bii
- Rosie Yang - I could not find her wikipedia page, and looks like she does not have any active pages. The link that I have put here is to a reddit post which was discussing her career and general disappearance from the music scene.
- Dino Lee - the wiki page is sorely incomplete I think.