Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Monday, November 17, 2014

Jackie Chan -- Telephone



I’ve always had fun with Jackie Chan’s (ジャッキー・チェン) movies, especially 2002’s bad critically acclaimed “The Tuxedo” (the gorgeous Jennifer Love Hewitt even played Jackie’s partned in this one), but I could never guess that Jackie had an active singing career, mostly during the 80s (he even collaborated with aidoru Naoko Kawai [河合奈保子] in the late 80s). After discovering this fun fact, I quickly started searching for some of his albums and the first one I came across was 1987’s “No Problem” (無問題/モウマンタイ), which was one of the albums he released for the Japanese market. 

The whole album (nine songs in total) is a pretty nice collection of synthpop songs, but it could have been better without the boring ballads (one third of the album, if I'm not mistaken). As we're talking about Jackie Chan, it's an okay result... he's always a fun guy to watch or, in this case, to listen to. In a more specific way, though, the one song that grabbed my attention and even conquered a place in my diverse “RANDOM SONGS” file was “Telephone”, the album’s opener. 

“Telephone” was a big surprise to me because of its major City Pop vibes. Jackie doesn’t sing here, limiting himself to some speaking sentences in English, Japanese and Chinese, so the music is the main focus. Also, I don’t really know why, but the song’s whole cheesiness makes me feel very warm inside. Well, let’s be honest here, Jackie receiving a phone call, talking simple sentences in three different languages and wishing Merry Christmas and Happy New Year with an easy listening song playing behind is the epitome of the word cheesy... and that’s hilarious! In the end, how do not love this song? Sax, synths, bass, the beautiful piano... and Jackie being Jackie. The world is perfect again.

2 comments:

  1. Really smiley fellow, that Jackie. He also seemed to enjoy his visits to Japan. I had no idea about "Telephone", and listening to it, I could also pick up a bit of Bananarama Eurobeat in there, too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, you're right, there are some Hi-NRG/Eurobeat synths through the song.

      I've been listening to some of Jackie's albums and I have to say that it was a very positive surprise to finally discover this new facet of his work. The negative thing is that finding information about his music is not that easy (at least for me). I wonder how much Jackie was involved in the overall production of his albums.

      Delete

Feel free to provide any comments (pro or con). Just be civil about it.