solid, good. pretty samey, and nothing to compensate from lyrics ‘cause I don’t speak mandarin, but not bad and there are a couple songs I do quite like
RELISTEN1: I do like him. His first couple albums are really solid. They’re not terribly complicated or clever, but he’s got a really good ear for engaging melodies and simple harmonies and it’s very satisfying. There are then a couple albums that have more songs that are more rappy, more (extremely mildly) hip-hoppy, and I don’t as much care for those. But then they pass and all the albums after that hit a pretty nice sweet spot where they benefit from the good pleasant qualities found in his early stuff, and are also a little more filled out and plush in their production, which is nice.
Overall, my opinion from my first listen still mostly stands. It is harder to connect when I don’t know the words, true. The music mostly is pretty samey (especially when there’s such quantity, it drowns a little), that’s also true. And, there are several songs that are genuine standouts I really like, also definitely true.
Of his pretty huge catalogue, I put 81 songs into my main playlist for daily listening (the one that at time of writing has 5,866 songs in it). At this point I’ve listened to each of those songs an average of 10 to 11 times, for a total of 60+ cumulative hours spent listening to Jay Chou. That doesn’t mean I love him, and it doesn’t mean I even know him that well. It just means I’m pretty familiar with him, and I feel pretty good about confirming my old opinions, even if they aren’t hugely interesting or noteworthy.
Of those 81 songs I listened a lot to, coming from 15 different albums, there are about 8 that I really like. That means about a standout song every other album. That’s not great. All this to say, I like Jay Chou, generally speaking. He’s pretty solid, he’s got a lot of songs I enjoy listening to, and I don’t regret the time I’ve put into getting to know his music. And, on the whole I’m still not gonna rate him higher than a B. I’m not invested in him, and he just has such a glut of songs that I care nothing for. He gets quality by pumping out a ton of mostly pretty good quantity, and that’s fine but it’s also kind of what the B range was made for. So yeah, I’ll recalibrate a little and move him a little higher within the B tier, but I maintain the B rank
tunafruitsandwitch 