5566

The Tai­wanese boy-band “5566”, led by Tony Sun has dom­i­nated the Chi­nese pubes­cent pop mar­ket since 2002. If you think that boy-bands like N’Sync had overblown arrange­ments and stu­dio glitz, they were noth­ing com­pared to this. Every­thing from piano glis­sandi and heav­enly choirs to tech­no nois­es accom­pany these mushy songs. Some of the lyrics are in Eng­lish, though most are in Man­darin Chi­nese (peo­ple in Tai­wan usu­ally speak a vari­ety of Fukienese at home, but Man­darin is the offi­cial lan­guage, taught in school). The melodies are some­times bor­rowed. Dis­con­cert­ingly, the last song on the album is to the tune of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”.…. Actu­ally, it would be fun to have this stuff in the back­ground at a noisy party.

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