Jay Chou (born 18 January 1979) is a Taiwanese musician, singer-songwriter, music and film producer, actor and director who has won the World Music Award four times. In 1998 he was discovered in a talent contest where he displayed his piano and song-writing skills. Over the next two years, he was hired to compose for popular Mandarin singers. Although he was trained in classical music, Chou combines Chinese and Western music styles to produce songs that fuse R&B, rock and pop genres. He composes all his own songs, as well as songs for other singers.
In 2000, Chou released his first album, titled Jay, under the record company Alfa Music. Since then he has released one album per year except in 2009, selling several million copies each. His music has gained recognition throughout Asia, most notably in regions such as Taiwan, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and in overseas Asian communities, winning more than 20 awards each year. He has sold more than 28 million albums worldwide up to 2010. He debuted his acting career in Initial D (2005), for which he won Best Newcomer Actor in both the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards,
and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor by Hong Kong Film Awards for his role in Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). He produced the theme song for the film Ocean Heaven starring Jet Li. His career now extends into directing and running his own record company JVR Music.
Chou's compositions are loosely categorized as pop music. While many of his works fall into contemporary R&B, rap, and rock genres, the term "Chou Style" (Chinese: 周氏風格; pinyin: zhōu shì fēnggé) has been popularized to describe his trademark cross-cultural music and his insistence on singing with slurred enunciation. Taipei Times once described the meaning of "Chou Style": "In what has become the archetypal Chou style, Taiwan's favorite son blends pop, rap, blues and a smorgasbord of esthetic elements of world music to create his dream-like never-never land ..."
He regularly fuses traditional Chinese instruments and styles with R&B or rock to form a new genre called "Zhongguo feng" (simplified Chinese:中国风; traditional Chinese: 中國風; pinyin: Zhōngguó fēng), which literally means "Chinese Style Music", some of which are written in the Pentatonic Scale as opposed to the more common seven-note scale (Diatonic Scale) to accentuate an oriental style. Besides his own culture, he also incorporated Spanish guitar in "Red Imitation" (Chinese: 紅模仿; pinyin: hóng mófǎng), American techno/electronica in "Herbalist's Manual" (Chinese: 本草綱目; pinyin: Běncǎo Gāngmù), rap with subtle classical music undertones in "Reverse Scales" (Chinese: 逆鱗; pinyin: nìlín), Blues style in "Free Tutorial Video" (Chinese: 免費教學錄影帶; pinyin: Mian Fei Jiao Xue Lu Ying Dai) and Bossanova style in "Rosemary" (Chinese: 迷迭香; pinyin: mídiéxiāng), to name a few. Sound effects from everyday life are frequently woven into his music, such as bouncing ping pong balls, touch tone phone dialing, helicopter blades, dripping rain, and radio static noise (concrete music).
His formal musical training is evident by the use of classical textures in his compositions. For example, counterpoint was used in "Perfection" (Chinese: 完美主義; pinyin: wánměizhǔyì) and "Sorry" (Chinese: 對不起; pinyin: duìbuqǐ), while polyphony can be found in "The Wound That Ends War" (Chinese: 止戰之殤; pinyin: zhǐ zhàn zhī shāng) and "Twilight's Chapter Seven" (Chinese: 夜的第七章; pinyin: yè de dì-qī zhāng).Chou's albums have been noted for the lack of change compared to his earlier works, yet he firmly stated that he will not alter his style: "They say I've been standing still ... but this is the music I want, and I don't see what I want by moving ahead." To demonstrate his point, he named his 2006 album Still Fantasy after his 2001 album Fantasy. His use of relaxed enunciation has been criticized as "mumbling" which he also insisted will not change however, recently he has adopted clearer pronunciation for certain songs, particularly more traditional Chinese style songs, such as "Faraway" (Chinese: 千里之外; pinyin: qiānlǐ zhīwài) which features Fei Yu-ching and "Chrysanthemum Terrace" (Chinese: 菊花台; pinyin: júhuā tái).
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