Moel's Blog

Jay Zhou Jie Lun is a Taiwanese musician, singer, producer, actor and director who has won the World Music Award four times. He is well-known for composing all his own songs and songs for other singers. 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 Chinese singers. Although he was trained in classical music, Zhou combines Chinese and Western music styles to produce songs that fuse R&B, rock and pop genres, covering issues such as domestic violence, war, and urbanization.

Early Life
At the tender age of three, he started to learn piano under constant supervision from his mom, Jay practiced piano diligently and eventually developed a love for the instrument and music. He went on to master a number of other instruments, including guitar, cello, jazz drum as well as the Chinese Dizi.
Jay's parents divorced when he was 13. Already a quiet boy to begin with, Jay grew even more secluded. He became independent rather quickly and was absorbed in his own music world. Whenever any musical ideas came to mind, he would jot them down. It wasn't before long he started writing his own songs.
Basketball was his other love and he often played with friends. In terms of school, Jay was not very strong academically, but he did manage to complete high school.

Road to Fame
By an interesting twist of fate, a schoolmate of Jay's signed up for a singing contest and wanted him to accompany her on the piano. The performance at the contest was by no means stunning, but somehow the host of the show, Jacky Wu, took notice of the musical score that Jay was playing from. And from then on, in the momentous year of 1998, the little boy who grew up in Linkou entered the entertainment industry primarily as a songwriter. Jay spent hours and hours on end in the studio, dreaming up melodies, and it soon became his second home. That was how he spent his first years in the industry. The songs he wrote for other artists were rejected fairly often at that time. After all, who was Jay Zhou ? No one really knew much about him. But over time, his songs were accepted and they paved the way for Jay's eventual successful musical career.

After working behind-the-scenes for some time, Jacky Wu was impressed with what Jay has to offer not only as a songwriter, but as a singer as well. And so, on November 1, 2000, he made his debut with the self-titled album Jay . His soulful voice and infectious tunes were well-received by listeners and “Jay Zhou” soon became a household name. His unique musical style garnered him attention from fans and critics alike.

Music Career
Released on September 20, 2001, Jay's second musical effort Fantasy propelled him to stardom with numerous hits such as “Kai Bu Liao Kou”, “An Jing”, and “Shuang Jie Gun”, just to name a few. He earned many awards with this album, including five Golden Melody Awards . This was an astonishing feat by an artist who has just arrived on the scene for a short period of time. After the successes of his first two albums, Jay launched his first music concert series, known as the Fantasy Tour, showcasing his piano and cello skills in this concert, which was kept mainly within Asia .

After his first concert series, Jay released Eight Dimensions again wowing everyone with his sheer musical talent. After this album Jay went into his second tour again, this time known as The One concert tour, and this time, at a much larger scale as compared to the Fantasy tour. In The One concert, we have seen Jay grown as a live performer with his live singing skills, and even a few dance steps to make the entire concert successful.

In summer of 2003, Jay released his fourth studio album Ye Hui Mei , named after his mother, which show how much Jay treasures his mother. From that point onwards, it was clear that Jay had the plan of releasing one album annually. Jay fine-tunes each song to perfection and never fails to surprise and capture his audience with his innovative musical ideas. The growth from one album to the next has been evident to those who have traversed this journey of music with Jay.
His own unique Chinese R&B style is unparalleled by another and he continues to make breakthroughs as he takes risks in attempting new things. The way he intertwines Chinese and Western music makes his songs endearing to people both young and old. The fusion of the two cultures is not only fresh-sounding, but has also rarely been done by other musicians before. Together with his long time friend and lyricist Vincent Fang, Jay's compositions and Vincent's lyrics managed to reflect Jay's sensitivity to human emotions and the details of life. He manages to touch people's hearts with striking words as well as educate people's minds with important lessons.

Movie Career
After being in the entertainment industry for several years, Jay has started to branch off from music a bit and ventured into the realm of acting. An interesting thing to note is that a lot of his musical inspiration simply emerges from watching movies. You may have often found that his music gives very vibrant visual imagery and his music videos bring those images to life. It should come as no surprise that besides being a singer-songwriter, he has also dreamt of being a film director one day. In the movie “Hidden Track” (2003), Jay guest-starred as himself briefly and got a taste of what it is like to be part of a film. He also specially penned 2 songs for the movie released in the Hidden Track EP.

In summer 2004, Jay's much anticipated album Qi Li Xiang was released . Once again, he managed to turned heads of both the critics and fans. The production quality has been taken up a notch and his musical style has also matured significantly. Hence, it is not surprising that Jay has garnered more awards under his belt with this album. Jay also made it clear that he will continue to have at least one song on all his album with the Oriental style. With that album, Jay launched his next concert series known as the Incomparable to Jay concert series in that same year, which took Asia by storm, and even went as far as the United States in Los Angeles . The concert DVD and CD for his Taiwan Incomparable concert was released in early 2005.

Jay's first major movie role came in "Initial D" (2005) when he starred in the film directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, the same duo that directed the Infernal Affairs trilogy. In the movie, Jay acts as the child prodigy, Takumi Fujiwara, a high school student in Japan with a tattered childhood. He plays along side other movie A-listers such as Anthony Wong, Edison Chen and Shawn Yue. Jay also composed two songs for the movie. The film has won numerous awards in Hong Kong, and more importantly, Jay won the award for Best Newcomer for his role in the movie during the 42nd Golden Horse Awards and also during the 25 th Hong Kong Film Awards . Jay was visibly delighted during the Golden Horse Awards when he accepted his award, in which he said in his acceptance speech, “I never thought that what I've not won in the Golden Melody Awards, I've got it back here” making reference to the Golden Melody Awards, which has been shutting him out from the Best Male Singer category year after year.
The movie has kept Jay very busy in most of the year, due to all the filming and promotional works for the movie. The movie also allowed Jay to break into the Japanese market, when he subsequently released his first compilation album called Initial J in Japan only, with the theme songs of the Initial D movie included in that album.

With Jay so busy with the movie, it is understandable that his album for 2005 was delayed by a few months, and was only released in November of 2005. The album was titled November's Chopin . The album was named it as such because of all the songs Jay used to practice on the piano when he was a child, it was Chopin's compositions left a deep-lasting impression on him. Also in this album, Jay openly made his disgust of the paparazzi known by personally writing and composing a song to ‘attack' the paparazzi by calling them dogs, the song is titled Si Mian Chu Ge, or “Besieged from All Sides”.

Jay also made another landmark in his 6 th album by directing his own music videos for some of the MVs of this album. At the same time, Jay began directing Music Videos for other artistes as well, most notably, Taiwanese group S.H.E.

In early 2006, Jay managed to work with his long time idol, Jet Li by composing the theme song and directing the MV for the movie, titled Fearless , the same title of the movie. This song was released in the Fearless EP , together with the music videos of all the songs off the November's Chopin album. Jay managed to get his next major movie role as the year went on. This time in a movie directed by the internationally acclaimed director Zhang Yimou, in the film “The City of Golden Armour ” (the official English title of the movie has not been announced). Jay received lots of praises from his co-stars Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li, as well as praises from Zhang Yimou himself. All of them were amazed with Jay's acting skills and his determination and drive when he works on the set. The movie is set to be released Christmas 2006, or early next year. Again, Jay composed the movie's ending theme song for the film.

With Jay being so busy pursuing acting, directing, and various endorsements, many fans worry that Jay may have given up on music. But Jay assured his fans that music will always be his first love and he had no intentions of letting it go. With that said, it has been confirmed that Jay will be the leading actor in the film "Slam Dunk" where Jay plays the role of a leading basketball star. The film is set to be released in March 2007. Fans hope he won't over exert himself in his many endeavors.

November  7, 2000 Jay 周杰倫同名專輯專輯專輯
September 1, 2001 Fantasy 范特西
July 19,     2002 Eight Dimensions 八度空間
July 31,     2003 Ye Hui Mei 葉惠美
August 3,    2004 Common Jasmin Orange 七里香
November 1,  2005 November's Chopin 十一月的蕭邦
September 5, 2006 Still Fantasy 依然范特西
November 2,  2007 On the Run 我很忙
October 14,  2008 Capricorn 魔杰座

Filmography: