Utada Hikaru tops Japanese magazine Oricon Style’s annual Favourite Artist Chart for the second year in a row. A total of 20758 votes were cast by the magazine subscribers for the 2008 poll.
The top 20 Oricon favourite artists in 2008 are…
1. Utada Hikaru 2. Kobukuro 3. aiko 4. Mr Children 5. Dreams Come True 6. Southern All Stars 7. Namie Amuro 8. B’z 9. Spitz 10. Arashi 11. Masaharu Fukuyama 12. Kou Shibasaki 13. EXILE 14. Porno Graffiti 15. Ayaka 16. YUI 17. Ken Hirai 18. YUKI 19. Kuwata Keisuke 20. Yuzu
Kindly note that artists in Japanese terms often refers to musicians but not actors.
The 41st Hong Kong TVB Anniversary Awards were presented on November 16, with drama “Moonlight Resonance” dominating the winner list as expected…
Veterans Ha Yu and Michelle Yim with best actor/actress awards (Image from
Baidu)
Read the rest of this post »
The 10th Mnet Korean Music Festival (MKMF) was held on Saturday (Nov 15) at Jamsil Olympic Stadium in Seoul.
The talk of the town goes to Lee Hyori and Big Bang’s special stage, where Hyori and TOP shared a little smooches… [more kissing pics on Kbites and K-popped]
Read the rest of this post »
Music video of “Like Being Hit by a Bullet” (총맞은 것처럼) by Korean pop-ballad star Baek Ji-young. The song is featured in her 7th album “Sensibility” which was released on Thursday (Nov 13)…
China’s Ministry of Culture on Wednesday (Nov 12) released a draft of new regulations to gather public opinions on commercial performances related matters; among the proposed regulation is to ban lip-syncing in commercial events in the country.
If the proposal is approved, artists who lip-sync will be penalised, and repeated offenders will have their performance license revoked.
It’s not the first time that such suggestion is made; a people’s representative had proposed similar idea in 2005, but didn’t manage to get much response.
Ironically the new proposal is made just months after the scandalous lip-synching at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony in which a background singer was used while having another kid lip-syncing at the centre of the stage.
Chinese actress Gong Li is officially a Singaporean after taking an oath and collected her Singapore identity card last Saturday (Nov 8).
The 43-year-old actress was supposed to collect her identity card on August 23, but failed to show up because she was filming a movie overseas. Her no show irked some Singaporeans who felt that she was disrespecting her new country… but it’s all history now.
Gong Li is married to a Singaporean businessman since 1996, so the switch of citizenship is not entirely surprising. Both China and Singapore do not recognise dual nationality, which literally means that she would have to renounce her Chinese citizenship.
Chinese netizens are generally unhappy about the news… lots of them are criticising Gong Li’s decision, while some are sharing concerns that this would become a trend among popular artists and younger generations.
Some netizens are showing support Gong Li though, stating that it’s her freedom to choose her own path; a few also stated that they would also like to migrate out of China if given the chances.
Chinese MV of “Not Mature Enough” (不够成熟 - Bu Gou Cheng Shu) by 16-year-old twins group BY2. The song is featured in their debut album “16 Under Age” (16 未成年) which was released a couple of months ago…
The public responses seem pretty encouraging for the Singapore born sisters, Miko and Yumi Peh… but it’s still too early to tell how popular they could be.
Their vocals still need some brush up, but I think they are already singing better than lots of the pop idols these days; and apparently they can dance a bit as well.
Legendary Japanese music producer Tetsuya Komuro was arrested on Tuesday morning (Nov 4) on suspicion of fraud and could face up to 10 years of jail term.
The 49-year-old is alleged to have scammed an investor of 500 million yen (~USD5 million) in August 2006 by selling copyrights of 806 tunes which he written but did not actually own the rights.
Tetsuya lost a civil suit in July 2008 in which he is required to pay 600 million to the investor as compensation, but he didn’t manage to do so by the deadline (Sept 30), thus prompted the investor to file a police report.
Tetsuya is widely regarded as the most successful J-pop music producer in 1990s. He was the producer for top Japanese stars like Namie Amuro, TRF, Ami Suzuki, Ryoko Shinohara and Hitomi etc… it’s estimated that more than 170 million copies of his production were sold over the years.
Tetsuya was then one of the richest entertainers in Japan with over USD100 million of wealth. His music career has however been declining since 2000, and his investment failure in 2001-2004 has sunk him into financial trouble which he obviously couldn’t manage to recover.
