Taiwanese band Sodagreen’s (蘇打綠) album Winter Endless (冬未了) leads this year’s nominees for the Golden Melody Awards — Taiwan’s version of the Grammy Awards — with eight nominations, including Best Mandarin Album, the jury said on Friday.
The album also earned nods in the categories of Best Song of the Year, Best Composer, Best Lyricist, Best Musical Arranger, Best Album Producer and Best Band, with Sodagreen’s lead vocalist, singer-songwriter Wu Ching-feng (吳青峰), scoring two nominations for Best Lyricist.
Winter Endless is Sodagreen’s 10th studio album and the last of four concept albums created as part of the band’s Project Vivaldi. The project began in 2009 and was inspired by composer Antonio Vivaldi’s concertos The Four Seasons.
Photo: CNA
The four albums were recorded and produced in Taitung, London, Beijing and Berlin. The final album was a collaboration between Sodagreen and the GermanPops orchestra.
Singaporean singer-songwriter Chua’s Aphasia and Taiwanese pop diva A-mei’s (阿妹, also known as Chang Hui-mei, 張惠妹) AMIT2 have also been nominated.
In the category of Best Mandarin Female Singer, A-mei and Chua are each seeking their fourth Golden Melody Best Female Vocalist award against competitors Peggy Hsu (許哲珮), Julia Peng (彭佳慧), Huang Qishan and Su Yunying (蘇運瑩).
Meanwhile, Singapore’s J.J. Lin (林俊傑) is to vie for his second win in the category of Best Mandarin Male Singer. The other nominees in this category are Malaysian Chinese singer Namewee (黃明志), China’s Li Jian (李健) and Taiwan’s Ko Chih-tang (柯智棠) and Matzka.
The Lifetime Contribution Award is to go to 64-year-old Taiwanese singer Tracy Huang (黃鶯鶯), who has released more than 50 Mandarin, English and Cantonese albums since the 1970s and is known for her songs Crying Sand and Sending My Love Across Time and Space.
Jury representative Chou Chien-hui (周建輝) said one of the biggest highlights this year is the level of sophistication and diversity of albums by new artists, some of who have been nominated in the categories of Best Album and Best Singer.
Several mainstream singers have shown their ambitions to use innovative techniques on their latest albums and to challenge themselves, despite already being commercially successful artists, Chou said.
He said another feature of this year’s nominees is the humanitarian spirit of many of the works and their focus on the environment, feminism, youth and other social issues.
Independent music and bands are also becoming more sophisticated with many outstanding works coming from China and Southeast Asia, Chou added.
This year, 482 albums and 11,177 works were submitted for award consideration, and 128 nominated works are to compete in 26 categories at the 27th Golden Melody Awards to be held at the Taipei Arena on June 25.
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