|
Jay Chou has gone back on his boyish look as he enters the second decade of his career. Du Lianyi / China Daily After reigning over the Mandopop scene for a decade there are signs that Jay Chou is coming to the end of his powers, Raymond Zhou analyzes. Jay Chou is coming to town. The reigning king of Chinese pop is touring nationwide to promote his 10th album, which has received mixed reviews. For the past decade, the Taiwan pop icon has released one album a year, except for 2009 when he starred in two big-budget movies and directed a television series. But all three of these projects turned out to be huge flops. There were calls in the press for him to return to music making. By any standard, the 31-year-old is an unprecedented success. He was beyond doubt the top Mandopop musician in the Chinese-speaking world in the Noughties. With a combined 25 million albums sold - this in a market phase when recorded music is cursed by new technologies and the rampant piracy that goes with them - no one comes close to his achievements. But recent whispers of the Chou charm slipping away, in addition to the big stumbles in his movie and television forays, are undermining his stature as the man with the Midas touch. The Chou maelstrom started with - what else? - the album Jay, released near the end of 2000. It won Best Album at Taiwan's Golden Melody Awards, the most coveted in the profession and the first of some 350 prizes that would follow in the next decade. It sold half a million copies in Taiwan alone. A star was born. | 
