R&B singer Jay Chou sidesteps questions about S.H.E singer Hebe
HE is indisputably the biggest pop icon in Taiwan.
So when Jay Chou launched his sixth and latest album in Taipei yesterday , more than 100 members of the media - from Taiwan and other Asian countries - turned up.
And the organisers had clearly gone all out to impress.
Three extended music videos that Jay himself had directed were shown, as if the event was a movie premiere.
Top executives from his record company, Sony BMG, also presented the R&B singer with a bottle of red wine from 1979, the year he was born.
Even the evergreen singer Fei Yu-ching, who performed a duet with Jay in the latter's first hit single, Faraway, made a guest appearance and had the crowd laughing at his jokes.
But the question on every reporter's lips was: Is Jay dating Hebe of girl band S.H.E?
Talk of a romance between them surfaced recently after Jay, 27, directed one of S.H.E's music videos.
There was also speculation that he had ended his relationship with TV host-turned-actress Patty Hou.
But Jay played it smart - he had invited Hebe to play his screen lover in a new music video.
When the inevitable topic came up in a group interview, his reply was: 'We're lovers only in the music video.'
What a clever way of evading the question.
IGNORES GOSSIP
Jay then said that he had roped Hebe in because of the recent scandals.
He said: 'You can ignore (the scandals), but whether we work together or not, the media will write about it. I'm not pleased about it, but I try to control myself and not let myself get affected.'
He has clearly been in showbiz long enough to realise that gossip and scandal is part and parcel of a celebrity's life.
'Everyone loves to read ba gua (gossip), myself included,' he said.
'But I insist on doing my music my way because that's how my fans like it. The music will go on forever, but gossip is all fabricated.'
He said that his music sometimes gets overshadowed by the gossip and that the album launch felt like a 'cheng qing da hui (clarification conference)'.
As for his love life, he would only say: 'My career takes priority for now. Everyone needs to fall in love, but I can't be like a normal person (when it comes to love).'
'MANY NEW THINGS'
He was a lot more verbose when it came to earlier criticism that he is losing his creative edge and churning out the same old sounds.
'I was worried that people would say that I've run out of ideas again, so I came up with many new things, not only in the lyrics but also in visuals.'
He said that he gets his inspiration for songwriting from the people around him.
The result is his new album, Still Fantasy, which will be out in stores in Singapore today.
In the album, Jay delivers an infectiously melodic bossa nova tune, Mi Die Xiang.
He also turned a song originally written for singer-host Matilda Tao into a suspense-thriller piece, Twilight's Chapter Seven.
He also wrote and directed seven music videos, flying to as far as London to create a Sherlock Holmes mystery novel setting for Twilight's.
But the biggest surprise was getting the veteran singer Yu-ching to duet with him - an unprecedented move that has wowed both the music industry and fans.
Jay confessed on stage that he was so nervous during the recording that the sweat glands on his palms went into overdrive.
He also made an effort to pronounce his words audibly - instead of in his usual mumble - to match Yu-ching's clear enunciation.
He said: 'I found the right person to do the song. If I'd done it alone, it would have been so much weaker.'
credit- she angelic