Joey Yung - Show Up (Limited Edition)

Unfavorable: "Show Up" ~ Joey Yung

Though the recent supposedly white-hot TV series "Beauty Is Waiting" is not that a big hit, main actress Joey Yung's skyrocketing popularity seems not affected at all. Joey Yung's "Show Up" Tour is scheduled to take place in October and in order to be in tune with the theme of her concert, Joey offers fans the up-tempo song "Show Up" (Track#2) with 15 other brand new melodies on her latest album "Show Up"!

"Show Up" offers 12 mixed tunes, some in Cantonese, some in Mandarin, some are up-tempo and some are emotion-venting. The crew which produced this latest album is strong and its songs are not bad. However, "Show Up" is in no way better than "My Pride", which was released earlier this year, as ten-to-one songs on the new album are repeating old tunes and are really and truly too saddening.

The biggest selling point for "Show Up" is probably Joey's ever-improving performance skills.

The leading track "Show Up" (Track#2) is boisterous, powerful and jolly. It fits perfectly as the theme song for Joey's concert in 2003. Nonetheless, it is not as classy as the concert theme song "Solemn Appearance" two years ago. The Mandarin version of "Show Up" is even worse because of the bad lyrics by Zhou YaoHui. The warning had been given all along not to invite Zhou to write any Mandarin songs for his incapability of mastering the Mandarin language.

All Mandarin songs written by him taste bad.

On the other hand, both songs, "I Am Willing" (Track#9) and "Slow-witted" (Track#10), written and composed by Wang DanYi sound great.

"I Am Willing" (Track#9) is quite a flourishing emotion-venting ballad which describes delicately how some young girls are prepared to make sacrifices in wars of love. Words like "My tears are ready, so please only betray me later rather than sooner" and "I am prepared, but please don ' t hurt my feelings that soon " impress the present reviewer much. As regards "Slow-witted" (Track#10), it is an interesting, softly fragrant and relaxing song.

The commercial theme song "Think Too Much" (Track#13) is beautiful and in rhythm with Joey's wonderfully expressive voice, while "Future Beauty" (Track#14) is a typical example of a TV drama theme song.Its lyrics and music are poor but it is extremely catchy and poppy nevertheless.

As for the rest, you might want to spare some time listening to "Forced Happiness" (Track#12), "Betrayed" (Track#3) and "Songstress" (Track#6). Yet, you would not miss too much if "Party Machine" (Track#8) and "Sweating" (Track#5) had been left out as they are a bit too flat, too ordinary and too boring.

Recommendations: "I Am Willing" (Track#9), "Slow-witted" (Track#10), "Think Too Much" (Track#13), "Forced Happiness" (Track#12)

Reviewer: Stephen Lee (Li ZhongYan) - Hong Kong
Translator: theDan (Chen EnNeng)