Leon renewed his contract with Sony a few months ago. I believe he renewed it for another 3 years for quite a bit of money. I understand that ever since Leon won the Golden Horse Award, he has gotten a lot of offers by many directors to produce movies. However, this should not interfere with his album recording. This is Sony's responsibility to release and promote his new album, but they are NOT doing their job. I don't think Leon is being frozen... BUT, he doesn't seem to be the 'First Priority' to Sony anymore. Clearly, many of you have seem or heard about Jay's new album. He is the hot new popular singer from Taiwan, and Sony is clearly promoting him at full throttle. Jay's record is making a fortune for Sony, and so Sony is seemingly focusing all their budget on him right now. Which of course is NOT fair to Leon, who has been with Sony for a few years, and helped them establish a great reputation and sales. Maybe we fans can write a petition letter, or letters of complaint to Sony... to let them know our opinion. But one thing that doesn't make sense, is that why would Sony resign Leon to a new contract for so much money, when they aren't even using him to make money??? I hope for further discussion at the Leon chatline.

personally, Sony has always been my favoriting recording company. All of my favorite artists have signed with Sony. However, upon hearing that Jay Chou signed with Sony, i was immediately disappointed. People give too much credit for Chou.

yeah i agree that jay receives too much credit...he isn't better than mark lui or leon lai...the only interesting thing is that he could do the job of both...

anyway i heard leon say in some article that he asked ppl to not compose songs for him yet...doesn't anyone remember that? or am i crazy > <

and i believe leon's new contract was the same amount as the last one but for a shorter time, therefore making him more expensive. think it was two years or something

to be honest, i think taiwan singers get too much credit full stop.
it's probably to do with me not understanding mandarin as well as cantonese but the majority of the taiwanese songs that i do hear have such forgettable tunes and verses that go on and on and just lack the catchiness of cantopop.

M, you're not alone.

all these taiwanese people saying hk people have no talent, have songs that don't flow, etc. I look at their songs and find that many, many of them are very similar. for most of the songs, i can't even tell them apart. I think cantonese people, because of so many tones (a TINY bit off could change the entire word), are forced to rely on the voice and a good melody. and that's what i prefer. there ARE good taianese songs of course. "wo xi huan" by david tao is very very nice. many jay chou songs are too. just none of them are songs that i'll remember forever

I never liked Taiwanese songs because they sound very plain, dragged out, and very similar to all other songs. And when Hong Kong singers sing in Mandarin, they also sounded more drab for some reason. But probably the Taiwanese would say the same thing about the Cantonese songs. :o

Nevertheless, after watching his concert VCD, I must say I like Jay Chou's music. While he did not adopt the Western tones, his songs somehow sound sweeter, catchier and more western than all other Taiwanese songs. It is refreshing. No wonder he is so popular at the moment. And to have him sing all his own creations, that's quite a feat for the Chinese music scene. I bet Taiwan is very proud of their man too.

As for the contract with Sony, Beary and Jenny Odo would be able to shed light on it at the chatline.

well people overrate jay chou incredibly. Sure, his songs are his own creation....but he's just the composer. More than 90% of his songs, someone else writes the lyrics for. I'm sure many forgets this crucial point. When Jay first came out, I loved him to death. But after his second album...the quality seems to be degrading. His songs all sound the SAME. =T

btw, if you do like jay chou - may i recommend David Tao and Leehom Wang? Simply marvelous. I enjoy their songs much more than Jay's.

Thanks for the tip, ghettocow. Let me check those out too now that I am exploring new type of music.

Leon, quick, release an album before I spend all my money on frivolous stuff !!!!!

yeh agreed, Jay might be popular right now, but everyone has to admit its all getting too much like the same stuff and the quality isnt that good...he spent a long time making his latest album and still it didnt seem to have the magic his first album did...

David Tao is good...he's even jay's idol~ lol

Lee Hom...hmm...have only ever heard 2 of his songs...quite listenable but havent heard enough of him to know if he's even that good or not.

Agree on that, a recent example is Miriam's last Mandarin album - ai! But it sounds weird when HK singers sing in Mandarin anyway, the only ones I am willing to hear are Jacky and Leon. But I do like Emil Chow; a fun and talented guy.

i think it's many, many times worse when mandarine singers try to sing in cantonese lol. but yeah i like the way cantonese sounds more. even though it doesn't flow as well, the sounds just sound better to me.

I'm suprise Leon sings mandrian more like a HK singer then a taiwan singer. Isn't his mandrian really good? I think Gigi Leung sound really good in Mandrian. Her voice is very suited to sing in mandrian. She has no HK accent or tone either. She sounds very natural. I agree, Miriam doesn't sound verygood in mandrian. She more suited to sing cantonese songs.

well Leon's first language was mandarin so yeh its good?
i was a bit disappointed after hearing Miriam's album, her canto songs are much better~

i thought leon's first language was still cantonese because he moved to hong kong as a small child? ahhh i always get these things mixed up

i do'nt think leon should release any more mostly-mandarine albums. they're usually not as good as his cantonese ones. [the red shoes] wasn't as good as i'd liked, and the other one...what's it called...[no one but me] i think...didn't have that many good songs on it.

ahhh i'm so anxious for his next cd. the only cd that i've heard THIS YEAR which had a good song for every track was LMF's [finalazy]. all the others have been pretty bad compared to what hk music used to be. Aaron's new cd was disappointing, as was Gigi's. Jay chou's was surprisingly average. Nic tse...very average. Miriam's songs were forgettable. Joey's cd was pretty good...not as good as her last oen though. Kelly Chen's cd had one good new song.

bleh. that's how i feel at least. leon's the only one i can depend on for cd's that are worth my money

I agree. I wasted money on Aaron Kwok's new album this year. I don't think I am going to even bother next time around.

At least I have Jordan's Heartless You and Jay Chou's to hold over during this time. I am going to buy 2 copies of each of Leon's when they come out.

yeah! jordan's was pretty good. something new to hear

I don't know about the Hongkong artist, these people you talks above are young singer? are they famous?

well the singers mentioned arn't that new really, besides nic, miriam, joey who are the "newer" ones~

yeah what Gav said. the even newer ones (juno, shawn yue, 2R, etc.) are even worse i think

er can nic and miriam still be considered "new"? they been around since '96-'97 now. i was gonna listen to all those albums you mentioned quadshock but now...

oh i was just saying they are the 'newer' ones meaning them compared to the others mentioned~ but when they first came out, they were barely noticed anyways~ i know Miriam's had quite a few albums..like quite a while ago, not sure about nic tho...

liked miriam from the start tbh, she entered the same singing contest as eason in 1995 and even wanted her to win. her best 'old' song is souvenir.
nic's been around for a while now, he was about 17 when he first started. guess he only got really big after joining eeg. anyone remember 'bad habit' and 'mo sing fong yau sing'?

Yeah "mo sing fong yau sing" was a pretty good song, along with "yut lieu baat lieu" and "fay zhou but ho"

yeh i like his older stuff more than his new songs~
his newest album was disappointing..

his new album was the first time i really tried his music out, and got a very mixed feeling...kinda average. which album do you think is his best?

did you guys talk sbou our leon???

lol no i got off topic. i was talking about nic tse

yep we've side-tracked, what was the topic again? hehe...

haha...one thing led to another~

but with regards to nic tse... ive neva bought/heard all his albums..only heard some of his older songs before his 'reborn' album. I guess i don't really mind his music too much.

same here, don't particularly like his voice so never really bothered with him after mo sing fong yau sing. but i heard the album with jade butterfly is good. oh and i love that song he wrote for joey, 'go gai'.

Sorry bout being off topic

I think Most Wanted would be Nic's best albumn although i think his albumns aren't that great, just certain songs on the albumns so i supposed one of those Greatist Hits albumns would be good. And watch out for those Mandarin albumns. They aren't as good and some just have mandarin versions on cantonese songs (eg Jade Butterfly) although i must admit i like "Perfume" and "Scared"

don't worry about going off topic, we do it all the time! :lol:

Here's a website about Nicholas Tse that my American friend put up. She's the one who helped me with my Jordan site.

http://invisionfree.com/forums/nutsaboutnictse/index.php?

wow that forum is nicely designed! wish i could do that :(...but 2000+ members and only 700+ posts, what the...? lol
sandra how do you get the side pic like that? my method seems to move the whole forum to the right but yours is kinda enclosed.

2000+ members?
omg...1 post a day by every member and thats nearly 1300 more posts than they have done now. lol

had an idea for the album;
I was listening to Karena Lam's new album and I found the most interesting thing about it was how she has some interludes where she just talks for a few seconds and this got me thinking, wouldn't it be great if Leon did this too! I'm sure most of you must also think his speaking voice is as beautiful as his singing voice!
And since he is known as a philosopher, how about having his 'golden words' in between songs? Or just talk about life in general? Or even perhaps have a story running through the album?
And it would also be great if Leon did some drama version of songs (kek ching baan) like Chi Lam Cheung did with his 'Wish Well' song or like Leon's 'Love Diary' song from 1993.

That would be nice Ah_M; I hear Leon talking on some of his cds when he's in concert...but I haven't a clue what he's saying anyway; just nice to hear him talk.. :D

same here, eternalcandle, but his voice is sweet.

the storyline thing would be really great. If all the songs were really different but represented different parts of the story, then the cd could be another work of art o.0