Hangin' Out In 100b

Isn’t it funny how you can get totally into The Olympics yet have no interest in sports whatsoever? Knowing you don’t really care at all, you still have this intense need to watch the Long Jump. Seriously – I’m watching rowing right now. Rowing. What’s that all about? I call it being Olympnotized. To kick off this year’s world-wide Olympnosis, I was planning on giving you all a run-down of past Olympic theme songs.

Sadly, the New York Times beat me to it.

So, if you’re interested in decades of Olympic cheese, go check it out. Since all eyes are on China right now, I decided instead to have a look at Chinese pop culture and see what those crazy kids are listening to over there. I found this chart on yesasia – it’s a couple of weeks old, but it’s the best I could do in a language I can actually read. So, let’s have a look at the top 5 …

(Note: the titles of these songs can be seen at the yesasia link above – I have absolutely no idea what they mean.)

#5

This is, apparently, “Lam Man Lung” by Juno featuring Softhard. It’s a smooth funky R&B/hip-hop-ish jam, not at all unpleasant. I seriously wish I could understand what they were singing about because I’m incredibly curious if the flashy virtual reality video has anything to do with the song. In any case, I love the bit at about 1:08 with the robot-y voice – I could listen to that all day long.

#4

I couldn’t find a proper video for this one, but at least you can check out the song. It’s listed on yesasia as Kay Tse, but – according to my shaky research – is actually Kelvin Kwan featuring Kay Tse. This song is odd – it’s hip-hop-ish in some of the vocals, but also a little like a Chinese Evanescence song.

#3

I think one is my favorite of the bunch – Ms. Ivana Wong is adorable and even though I have no idea what’s going on, it’s quite catchy. But what on earth is going on with the bar codes and paint and stuff?

#2

I have to admit, I watched this video twice and I’m still not sure what happened with this couple. And that has nothing to do with a linguistic or cultural barrier, only my own inability to understand the constant time shifts. No matter what happened to these guys, Kary Ng proves that breaking up is hard and love songs are relevant anywhere.

#1

And at the top of the chart, here is Fama, another hip-hop-ish song. Funny how all of these songs could be popular anywhere if they were in a different language. I love these guys – the song itself isn’t the kind of thing I’d expect to hear pumping from my stereo though it does kind of suck you in about halfway through. Mostly I love how they’re regular-looking and, well, kind of dorks. They make me incredibly happy and I’m glad they got the top spot.

So there you have it – a little taste of a land far far away. Now I have to go give my attention to some swimming heats that I don’t really care about.