Hi everyone, I am posting a few songs a week onto this blog. Hope you will like my pick for the day. Feel free to post links for songs that you think are related to my pick :D
The
song for today is “他約我去迪士尼” by Kellyjackie. This song
came out in 2005. It was a song took advantage of the internet and the opening
of Hong Kong Disneyland.
This
song was uploaded by Kellyjackie for free download in 2005. Kellyjackie was a ‘internet’
singer (by that I mean she didn’t have an contract with any producer, and they
mainly produce song for leisure and let people to download them from the
internet.) The English translation of the title is “He invited me to Disneyland”.
The songs basically talks about love, but it is written in such a way that it
describe the fantasy and fairy tales of Disney. It also talks about the excitement
of a girl walking into Disneyland. Because this song was so popular and the
lyrics matched the theme of Disney, Disney at the end used this song for their Hong
Kong Disneyland promotion. They invited one of Kellyjackie’s idols, Kelly Chan,
to sing this song with her. (Note that Kellyjackie is not her real name. She
used this name for performance only. This name comes by combining her idols Kelly
Chan and her own name Jackie.) Hope you will enjoy the song.
Today’s
song is “七百年後” by Eason Chan. This song was inspired by Pixar’s
movie “Wall E”.
This
is really matches the movie. Someone did cut some footage out from Wall E and
make that into a music video for this song, but it got deleted due to copyright
reason. This song is about love could be simple, we don’t need all the fancy
stuff in this world to love and be loved.
By
the way, if you haven’t seen Pixar’s Wall E, you really should watch it. It is
one of my favourite movies. Not sure why many people think that animations are
for kids only. Like many of my friends, when I told them that I love Pixar’s
movies, they laugh. I guess it is because they don’t see the message behind
those movies. What I really like about Pixar is that their movies are for both
kids and adults. While kids see what they wanted to see, adults see the deeper
meaning and message in the movie. Like Wall E, on the surface, you could see it
as an adventure movie, could be as simple as a robot trying to save the world
and fall in love with another robot. But really the message that I see behind
it is completely different. My understanding of the message is that if we keep
living our life the way we do, we are going to destroy our world. With our
technologies growing so quickly, things that used to be hard to achieve could
be as simple as pressing a button. These can lead to health problem, and not
just that, it could also blind us from seeing the beauty of the natural world.
So this leads us to think whether technologies are helping us or destroying us.
Anyway,
I hope you will enjoy this song. If you got the chance, watch Wall E as well.
(The first one is the Wall E version music video
with English translation of the lyrics. But just in case that will get deleted,
I have also linked to the normal version.)
Today’s
song is “燕尾蝶” by Shine. The English translation of the title
is “Swallowtail butterfly”. This is a very meaningful song.
This
song is about environment. It talks about how we slowly destroying our would to
build our civilisation. The song is slow paces and if you don’t know what the
lyrics is talking about you would feel that it is a peaceful song. But if you
actually pay attention to the lyrics, you will feel that it is very scary. The
lyrics as I said is saying we are destroying the earth, but yet the way Shine
are singing it make it sounds like they don’t care what’s happening. This is
scary because this is exactly how the majority of the people think these days.
We all know that what we are doing to Earth is bad, but yet the majority of us
are still doing it on day to day basis. We are so selfish that we no longer
care what’s happening in the world, we just wanted to enjoy our life in the
best manner without carrying what that will caused to others (in this case, I
am talking about animals, plants and other creatures that we share the Earth
with.) Hope you will enjoy the song, and start acting as an environmental friendly
person.
The
song for today is “一光年” by Leo Ku. This song has a very
similar name to the song that I chose for yesterday (26th Apr 2012 (一萬年– Daniel Chan)).
The title
in English is “One light year”. Similar to yesterday’s song, it is also about
love, but the meaning of the lyrics is somewhat opposite. This song is about a
boy who really look up to a girl, but he feel that they are so far apart. Even
if he spent a thousand years with her, they would still be far apart, this make
him feel very sad. Hope you will enjoy this song.
The
song for today is “一萬年” by Daniel Chan. This song was
quite popular in the 90’s in Hong Kong.
The English
translation of the title is “Ten thousand years”. This song is about how one
person have kept waiting for his perfect match and finally they meet. Even
though they were so far away from each other, but as they are meant to be a
pair, he believes that they would meet each other some point during their life.
Hope you will enjoy this song
Today’s
song is “(你沒有)好結果” by Amanda Lee. This is not an ordinary
love song. The translation of the title in English is “(You wouldn’t have) A
good ending”. The reason why “you wouldn’t have” is put inside a bracket is
that the publisher thinks that the name of the song is too aggressive, so they
requested the song writer to do something about it. At the end they decided to
put that part inside the bracket, so that it looks will minimise the negative
meaning.
This
was a hit song in the 90’s in Hong Kong. It is about a girl is broken heart
because she had just breakup with her boyfriend. From the title, you would have
already guessed that the breakup wasn’t under the girl’s wills. So throughout
the song, the girl hopes that a girl that her ex-boyfriend loves would hurt him
as much as he had hurt her. It also said that if she sees her ex-boyfriend end
up having a good relationship, it would hurt her even more. So this song is quite
different to other songs about breakup, as this one show the extreme cases of
broken heart and show how love can turn to hate. Hope you will like this song.
Today’s song is “Desperado” by The Carpenters. The original
version was sung by an American band called Eagles.
My interpretation of the lyrics is that there is this person
who is trying to protecting herself by not letting herself to fall in love. The
singer (the person telling the story), who love this woman, is saying that she
should let herself to fall in love before it is too late.
I love the tune of this song, and I like both the original
and The Carpenters covered version, but I think the way The Carpenters present
this song is slightly better. Anyways, I have linked both version, so you can
decide yourself. Enjoy the songs for today.
Desperado – The Carpenters
(The attached video might got some problems when playing on Blogger, so here is a direct link to the YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUiph6JPO2g)
Today’s song is “I Remember You” by Zen. Zen is a band in
Hong Kong in the 90’s.
“I Remember You” is a very famous song by Zen. Younger generation
may not recognise this song by the name, but I am quite sure that if they
listen to the first few lines of the song they would realised that they had
heard this song before.
This song is about a guy realising that he misses his
girlfriend, after they break up. So throughout the song, it keeps mentioning
that how he always thinking about her, how empty he felt now when she is not
with him anymore. Hope you will enjoy this song.
Today’s song is “Careless Whisper” by George Michael. I like
this song because of its melody.
There seems to be many different interpretations of the
lyrics of this song. But I think the one that most make sense to me is the one
about love. I think that in this song George used dance as a metaphor as love.
If this is correct, then what this song is talking about is that the person has
done something that betrayed his girlfriend (could possibly be best friend
either). The girl had found out about this and decided to break up. What
exactly he did was not mentioned in the lyrics. Now that he realised he have
done something that got no turning back and he have destroyed their
relationship. He also thinks that he couldn’t love anyone else like the way that
he loves her.
There happened to have two versions of this song, both with
the same lyrics, but the producer were different. Anyways hope you will enjoy
this song.
Today’s song is “路...一直都在” by Eason Chan. The English
translation of this song title is “Road…is always there”.
This song is about tracing dream. It talks about how we
should push through any difficulties that we face to pursue out dream. In our
life we face many dark hours, we might get lost and unsure what to do. But that’s
just life. All we need to do is to hold on to our dream, and not get frighten
by the failure consequences and if we keep going, we would realised that the
road to our goal is always there.
Hope this song will give you strength at difficult times.
Enjoy.
Today’s song is “My Love My Fate” by Janice Vidal. When this
song first came out, it was the first time I heard Janice voice. I love Janice
voice and singing style.
I really like this song. I remember when I got the CD, I
keep looping this song. I must have listened to it 10-15 times in a roll before
I stop for a toilet.
This song is about a girl trying to break up with her boyfriend.
She is really in love with him, but yet, she realized that her boyfriend got
another girlfriend. In the lyrics it had mentioned that the boyfriend asked her
to shear him with his other girlfriend. But of cause, she didn’t and she left.
At the end of the lyrics, it shows that she is very unhappy about this
relationship and that she is treating this experience as if she was watching a
movie, where her boyfriend is an actor, acting that he love her over the years.
Hope you enjoy this song.
The song for today is “棋子” by Faye Wong. I love how
Faye sings this song. The English translation of the song title is “Chessman”.
This song is about the relationship of a couple. It
basically talk about the girl is lost with her relationship. She wanted to
breakup with her boyfriend, but yet she feel that she is trapped with him. She
feel that the whole relationship is in control by her boyfriend, she feel that
she is a chessman, can’t control her own will. She know that she is not one of
the most important girls that he has, but also not one of the minor one either.
So she is very lost and letting her boyfriend to control the destiny of their
relationship. Hope you will enjoy this song.
Today’s song is “True Colours” by Olivia Ong. The original
was sung by Cyndi Lauper, but I think Olivia’s version is better, as I think
her voice is a better match to the song.
Initially, when I first heard this song, I didn’t like it
too much as the whole song is very flat. But one day I paid attention to the lyrics
and I think that it is a very good song. This song is basically about how we
should see ourselves. When our life became difficult, we tense to hide ourselves,
when we acts differently, we will try to blend in with others. This song is
telling us to be ourselves, let our true self to shown, and if we do that we
will get all the love that we wanted we will shine through the world. Hope you
will enjoy this song.
Today’s song is “天梯” by C AllStar. This is a beautiful
song for a very touching story in China. The direct English translation of the song is
call “Sky ladder”.
Instead of talking about the lyrics of the song today, I am
going to talk about the true story that the song talks about. (I found that it
is very difficult to get an English version of this story, so hopefully this
will give you some idea of the story.) This story is about a couple, the male
called Lau Kwok Kwong (劉國江) and the female called Chui Chiu Ching (徐朝清) (I am going to
refer to their surname in the following, so Lau as the husband, Chui as wife). In
1942, when Lau was 6, he meets Chui when Chui first moved into his village. At
that time, Chui was 16, 10 years older than Lau. 10 years later, Chui husband
passed away, leaving her by herself with 4 kids, eldest is 9 years old and the
youngest is 1. At that time, people look down at widows, saying that Chui bring
bad luck to her husband. Chui was living in poverty, she can only afford to eat
mushroom that she found from the mountain. The only thing that she can do was
to make grass sandals, which she can sell for 5 dollars. Lau wanted to help her out, but he was worried
that he would get rejected (as Chui was being discriminated, it is not hard to
believe that she would reject others help to prevent others being
discriminated as well) or that others will laugh at him for helping Chui. Until
one day, Lau heard that Chui fallen into a river with her youngest son, he
quickly get there and saved them both. This was the first time that Lau looks
straight to Chui eyes. Since then, Lau helped Chui’s daily life, helping her to
cut woods for fire, bring water back to her house. The news spread through the
village fast, many people start talking about Lau, some approach him to tell
him stop helping Chui. Lau’s mother was very unhappy that his son’s action, and
most people were worried that this would make life hard for Lau as well. A day
in 1958, Chui told Lau to stop helping her out as it is not good to stick
around with a widow. That night, Lau sneak into Chui’s house and told her that
he wanted to marry Chui. Chui looked at Lau then to her four kids, tears came
out from her eyes but she shook her head. Lau said “I am serious”. The next day
the 6 of them disappeared from the village. They move to the mountain to avoid
gossips. Their life were hard, they grow their own food, but got stolen by
animals. One year the flood came and washed away their house. Later on, the
youngest kid die when he was five, but after that they have 4 more kids. When
they live in the mountain, they sometimes go down the mountain to buy some food
and transported their kids to school. But the road down the mountain is very narrow
and it is full of thorns. Lau was worried that his partner would trip over, so
he started to build a love stair. Lau spent over half a century to build a
stair of over 6000 steps only with the most basic tools that he got. All their
kids now have move away from the mountain to get work in the city, only their
third son is living in a town close by. His son have asked the couple to move
down with him, but they are too used to the life in the mountain. They promised
each other whoever pass away first, the other will buried the dead one in the
mountain and move with their son. In 2007, Lau passed away. Breaking her promise,
Chui still lives in the mountain as she misses the time that she spent with her
husband. This story was discovered by a group of mountaineers, when they saw
this stairs that lead to the top of the mountain in 2006. Hope you will enjoy
this song. I have linked to a non-official version of the songs that displace footages
of the couple.
Today’s song is “I Dreamed a Dream” by Susan Boyle. This
song is from a play called “Les Miserables” and this is the song that makes
Susan Boyle famous.
I was very amazed when I first heard this version of the
song then saw the picture of Susan. When I first heard her voice, I thought she
is a young woman, then after that I search on the net to see how she looks
like. I was very shock at first as she looks completely different to how I
thought she looks, she is a lot older then I what I was expected. I guess that’s
why people said you shouldn’t judge people by their faces.
Back to the song. This song is about the character Fantine reviewing
her life. Basically this song is about how she had dreams and love, but one day
her lover left her and her life has turn upside-down. Although I found it hard
from time to time to hear exactly what she is singing, but I quite like this
song as the vocal part is very strong. Hope you will like this song.
The song for today is “空凳” by Danny Summer. Another
song about the love between father and son. This is the last one of the series (checkout “單車”and “追憶”) (edit on 25th May 2013: A new song is added to this series, check out “負親”)
I don’t like this song as much as the other two in the
series, but since I have posted the other two, I should complete my series with
this song as well. Although all three songs are about father and son, but they
are all slightly different from each other. Eason’s “單車” is
about growing up and understanding the love from his father, George’s “追憶”
is about the memory that the father and son share and the pain of losing a
father. Danny’s “空凳” (by the way, the English translation of the title is “Empty
chair”) is about regret. The lyrics goes like this “There is an empty chair,
but it still attract me to get closer. A long long time ago, in this chair, my
dad was like a giant. There is only regret left in this wear chair. Long time
ago, this chair used to be beautiful, and there were little wrinkle on dad’s
face. Staring at this chair along make me wish that I could sit with him again.
Looking at this chairing make me sad, why I didn’t tell him what I wanted to
say. I was lazy to say “I love you”, lazy to say “I love you”. I used to think
that I was the most important. But today I realised that I love him, I love him
forever, but I can only say it to an empty chair.”
I guess all these 3 songs bring out a point that the love
between father and son are not in words. Unlike the love from mother, father’s loves
are usually not shown to you directly, but they would try their best to protect
you behind your back. I guess this is the way of love between men, and it would
be hard for female to understand it. Hope you will like the song for today.
Just for your information, the lyrics of “追憶” and “空凳”
were written by the same person.
Today’s song is “追憶” by George Lam. George is a very
famous singer in the 80’s and 90’s in Hong Kong.
This song “追憶” (meaning “Recall”) is very similar
to the song “單車” (29th Mar 2012 (單車- Eason Chan), both of them
talks about the love between father and son. While Eason’s ”單車” is
about how a son have grown up and finally understand the way his father loves
him, “追憶” is slightly different. “追憶” is
really likes its name implies, recalling memories with his dad. In “追憶”,
the father have passed away and the son is recalling all his memories. The song
starting started off talking about the son, when he was still a kid, have seen
an performer performing with puppet and he loved the performance. But once the
performers have left, they didn’t leave behind a single trace. The son then
questioned why everything that grown up with him can’t stay with him. He
recalled the time he was walking with his dad during a hot summer, a time when
his dad discussed his future with him and the first time they drink together. He
questioned himself why summer feels as cold as winter from the time his father passed
away. He feels hard to accept that his father had passed away and that it feels
like he is the only person left in the world. At the end of the song, the son
finally understood that he have to keep strong by himself. When there is time,
he will recall his memories, happy and sad. Even though he is sad, but he is
glade that time has left behind lots of memories, everything that has grown up
with him will stay in his heart. People he loved will always stay in his heart.
After reading through the lyrics once when writing this I am
already crying. Just like Eason’s ”單車”, I don’t know why every time I
listened to this song I cry. These two songs are my all-time favourite. Hopeful
tomorrow I will introduce the third and final one in the line. Hope you will
enjoy “追憶” as much as I do.
The song of the day is “Vincent” by Don McLean. So finally today is not a wedding song :p
I first heard this song in a TV drama series and I love the melody of this song, at that time thought I didn’t pay much attention to the lyrics, all I know is that the “Starry starry night” at the start of the song really catch my ears. Until recently, I looked up the lyrics and meaning of the songs, I realised what this song is really about.
This song is about Vincent Van Gogh. Not sure how many of you know about this, but Van Gogh was not famous when he was alive. It was only after his dead his painting became famous. Feel quite sorry for him, all the hard work that he did at the end didn’t made him any profit, yet people that have nothing to do with him make big bucks out of his painting. His life was a tragic, he didn’t have any one that can understand him, and finally he committed suicide to end it all. This song picks up on the life of Van Gogh. In the lyrics, it goes through a lot of his famous painting, and at the same time telling us how Van Gogh feels during his depression stage and how lonely he was. Hope you would like this song, enjoy.
Today’s song is “一對對” by Ekin Cheng. Again I found this
song when I was searching for wedding songs in my music library :p (Sounds like
I will be keep posting wedding songs for a while). This is a song from a Hong
Kong movie call “風雲” (The English title is call “The Storm Riders”) and the movie
came out in 1998.
I love the melody of this song, especially at the beginning when
the kids start singing, it really give you a sense of fantasy. The song
revolves around an idea of pairs. (The song title in English means “Pairs”. The
lyrics are very simple, but it is somewhat like a poem. The first part, “月亮亮眾星伴隨
快看看滿天星淚日一對 夜一對螢火一對對”
in English, it is “The bright moon is accompanied by stars, looks at all the
stars, pairs in daytime, pairs at night, fireflies are in pairs as well.” The
second part is “夜靜靜眾生伴隨雨細細有風相聚來一對 回亦一對落花一對對”
this in English means “Quiet night is being accompanied by people, rains are
being accompanied by wind, come as pairs, leave as pairs, petals fall in pairs
as well”. The last part “問螢火 照耀誰不怕累怕孤獨睡撲翼飛去在長空裡有甚麼不對雪地冰天也一對”
means “Ask the fireflies, who to shine at, not afraid of being tired but afraid
of being alone. Let fly to the sky, no matter what’s wrong, even at the coldest
day we will still be a pair.” The original lyrics is much better than my
translation, hope that my bad English wouldn’t disturbed you from loving the
song. Enjoy
Today’s song is “世界之最[我願意]” by
Sammi Cheng. One of my family members will be getting married at the end of the
year and she asked me to pick some songs for her wedding. So last night I was
going through my collection and found this song.
The title in English is “Best of the World (I Do)”. This is
not a typical wedding song I guess, as the melody is not the typically slow
pace, but the lyrics are quite meaningful. The lyrics basically is about a
couple that just got married, and that she is thinking if tragic happened to
her husband she will feel very painful. Apart from that she also mentioned
about how happy she would be when her husband is with her, even in the extreme case
when it is the end of the world and the sky are falling down, it wouldn’t
matter if her husband is by her side. Hope this song will bring love to you, enjoy.
