Music Career
Musical Style
Jay Chou's compositions are loosely categorized as pop music. While many of his works fall into comtemporary R&B, rap, and rock genres, the term "Chou Style" (周氏风格)[2] [3] has been popularized to describe his trademark cross-cultural music and his insistence on singing with relaxed enunication. Taipei Times once described the meaning of "Chou Style" with reference to his album "Common Jasmine Orange" (七里香) : "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..."[4]. He regularly fuses traditional Chinese instruments and styles with R&B (e.g. "East Wind Breaks" 东风破, "Hair Like Snow" 发如雪, "Faraway" 千里之外) or rock (e.g. "Nunchucks" 双截棍, "Dragon Fist" 龙拳, "Golden Armor" 黄金甲) to form a new genre literally meaning "China Wind" (中国风). For Chou's new movie Curse of the Golden Flower, the song, "Chrysanthemum Flower Bed" (菊花台), was influenced by ancient Chinese styles. For this song, Jay sang very clearly and slowly, in contrast to his usual singing style. Besides his own culture, he also incorporated Spanish guitar in "Red Imitation" 红模仿, American techno/electronica in "Compendium of Materia Medica" 本草纲目, first-generation Japanese arcade synthesizer music in "Ninja" 忍者, rap with subtle classical music undertones in ("Reverse Scales" 逆鳞), bossanova style in "Rosemary" (迷迭香) to name a few. Chou's compositions emphasize diversity and creativity to demonstrate that he is more than a standard pop singer.
