Faraway - Jay Chou feat Fei Yu Ching

I'm not much of a Chinese music listener, most of my friends who know me know that I'm more into R&B and Hip Hop, but here's a song I quite like which I was introduced to during my NS days.

I think what makes this song really nice isn't just the tune, but what my friend shared with me that caught my attention.

The music is rather flawed, especially in terms of Jay's choice to team up with Fei Yu Ching. When you normally do a duet, you team up with someone of your similar vocal calibre, but with Faraway, Jay chooses Yu Ching to do the duet, a guy whose vocals are way stronger than Jay. You can definitely see it during the chorus when Fei sings it with ease and Jay struggles to keep up with Fei's vocals.

Normally such a move would be considered musical suicide for the artist's career, but for Jay Chou it seems like he was also seen as daring, to actually try and team up with artists way better vocally than he was while others would just shun the idea completely. For that reason, I respect him for having the guts to do what he did.

So apparently my mum came into my room when she heard me playing Chinese music, and upon me sharing my thoughts on his duet with Fei, she shared me this video of his duet with China's prominent singer Song Zuying.

It's like seeing man trying to duet with a vocal goddess. Mind blown.