I realized that I haven't done an artist bio in a while, so I will briefly describe an Asian artist this week.
One
of my early discoveries in the world of Chinese pop music was Will Pan.
He was born in West Virginia and moved to Taiwan, his native country,
as a child. When he became older, he studied at Cal Poly Pomona for a
while before he decided to pursue a career in entertainment.
Will
Pan's interest in the entertainment industry was actually present
before left college. While studying at Cal Poly Pomona, he participated
in the NMG/BMG Los Angeles Singing Competition and won "Best Image
Award." Although he didn't receive an award for his singing ability, he
did catch the attention of Andy Lau's, a very prominent Cantonese
singer/actor, manager. His manager invited Pan to audition for the
position of a host on a new show called "V Style Society." Besides
hosting, Pan also dabbled in various areas of entertainment. He clung on
to his dream of becoming a singer and sang four songs in the soundtrack
for the first drama in which he acted, named "Great Teacher." Soon
after he filmed his drama, he finally got the opportunity to release a
solo album. His debut album, titled "Gecko Stroll" (I wasn't aware that
geckos had a stroll), featured songs written by well-known C-pop artists
like Jay Chou and Anson Hu.
Over
the years, Pan has matured as a singer and has made great progress in
his singing career. His style began as more old-school hip-hop and
developed into somewhat pop and occasionally R&B. He released an
album each year and even did a collaboration with Akon. I thought their
song turned out alright, but some of my friends thought it had "the
quality of a potato." Since the feedback varied so drastically, you'll
have to judge for yourself:
(Here's where the title of this post becomes relevant. Their collaboration piece is called Be With You from Pan's album 007, alluding to James Bond's code name. The music video is also based on the story of Will Pan being a spy.)
-Sherry
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