Jay Chou: ‘Best Works of Artwork’ Is Star’s Most Formidable Mission

Jay Chou likes to suppose huge. His newest music launch, “Greatest Works of Art,” is not only the Mando-pop king’s first full-length album after a six-year hiatus. The album’s elaborate, worldwide manufacturing of its eponymous first single and the accompanying music video, options the “cameos” of a few of the largest names in artwork historical past.

It units Chou up properly for the his subsequent inventive chapter: an artwork movie.

“This music video has acquired loads of good suggestions, together with from the French Vacationer Workplace, so I’ll contemplate making ready a movie venture that tells a narrative revolving round an artist. I would direct it too,” Chou informed Selection. Regardless of having appeared in Hollywood movies equivalent to “The Inexperienced Hornet” as Kato, superhero blockbusters now not enchantment.

“If I have been to make a movie, I might create my very own type of artwork movie. After all, it’s additionally essential to take the industrial market into consideration,” he stated.

The newfound ambition of the mega pop star—additionally a music composer, producer, actor, and movie and music video director—shouldn’t come as a shock. Chou demonstrated his storytelling and movie directing potential along with his acclaimed 2007 debut “Secret,” and extra just lately by curating a recent artwork public sale with Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.

Gross sales of the 12-track Mandarin album “Best Works of Artwork” have already reported nice success since its launch in mid-July. It offered 5 million copies in China throughout its first week, beating the single-region gross sales report set by Adele’s “25,” which offered 3.38 million copies within the U.S. in 2015. Chou’s album additionally offered greater than 200,000 copies within the star’s native Taiwan.

The music video of single has amassed greater than 17 million views on YouTube in three weeks, whereas second single “Nonetheless Wandering” totaled greater than 9.8 million views in two weeks. The most recent single, “You Are The Firework I Missed” has recorded almost 3.2 million views simply two days after it was launched on July 27. Media forecasts estimate that gross sales of the album might problem the annual gross sales report of 10 million copies, and put it on monitor to be the best-selling album on this planet this yr.

The manufacturing of this new album additionally reveals Chou’s ambition to take his inventive profession additional on to the worldwide stage. It sees Chou singing in Mandarin in his signature soulful R&B groove, which regularly incorporates classical music, blues, rock ’n’ roll, up to date pop, and Chinese language sensibility as has been his type since sensational 2000 debut album “Jay.” However the manufacturing of the brand new album and its movies concerned extra worldwide collaborations. Some have been shot within the U.S.

Chou has teamed up with internationally famend Chinese language pianist Lang Lang and award-winning Taiwanese American violinist Ray Chen for the title track “Best Works of Artwork,” which is meant to pay tribute to a few of the most vital artists in historical past. Chen performs the violin solo composed by Chou. “I hope to make classical listeners really feel that pop and classical is usually a excellent mixture,” the star stated.

“Once I first heard of this piece, I assumed it was actually attention-grabbing as a result of there are parts of classical music mixed with the pop world,” Chen stated in a video interview. “It’s a enjoyable venture to be concerned in.”

Chou directed the time journey music video of “Best Works of Artwork,” which is actually a brief movie with an entire plot, and which can have given Chou the arrogance to now pitch for a characteristic movie about artwork.

Shot in Paris on the Samaritaine division retailer, the Mando-pop king disguises himself as a safety guard with a purpose to sneak himself into the historic constructing and play a magic piano that transports him and his accomplice in crime from current instances to the Nineteen Twenties French capital. There he meets a few of the best artists of the twentieth century, together with the Surrealists Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, Claude Monet, Chinese language-French painter Sanyu, and Chinese language poet Xu Zhimo.

In Chou’s creativeness, these artists are enchanted by his magic methods and have been impressed to create the classical works which have left a mark within the historical past of artwork – all the things from Dali’s melting clocks in “The Persistence of Reminiscence” (1931), to Magritte’s “The Son of Man” (1964), and Monet’s work of waterlilies.

“On this wild period, because the king of music, I feel I don’t want an image body,” he sings. “My musical notes are all the way forward for artwork.” He additionally encounters a mysterious pianist performed by Lang, who challenges Chou in a music battle.

The plot of the music video entails appreciable analysis into the historical past of artwork, artists, Paris, and magic, the star famous. He additionally fills within the gaps within the story with items of his personal creativeness, and he invents connection between the artists. “You’ll be able to think about if the literati and artists gathered collectively in that period, what would they be like, drawing one thing for one another?” he requested.

Earlier than embedding himself within the movie, Chou is poised to take his music on the street, because the post-pandemic world opens up. He’s set to take his Carnival World Tour to Singapore in December, adopted by a present in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that has been rescheduled to January, 2023, attributable to COVID delays.