One Million Star: Hottest reality-based singing program in Taiwan

If you haven't heard about the show One Million Star (超級星光大道) before, you must be living under your shell. Or perhaps you are just not into the Chinese music industry.

Don't we all love kung fu movies? In a typical kung fu movie, the gang from a rival school (usually bad guys) will always ask for a challenge from the main actor (usually from the best kung fu school in town). In Cantonese, it is called tek gun or chai cheong, if you know what I mean. Even Chuck Norris wanted to challenge Bruce Lee to see who is the best.

The same idea is applied to this singing contest whereby challengers are welcome to, well, challenge (in this show, they use the term 'PK', which I still do not know what exactly it stands for) the contestants. Some challengers suck but there are also some good ones, like Jam Xiao, who are feared by the contestants in season 1, which is currently shown on AEC channel on Astro every Sunday night. In season 2, one of the challenger is our very own Malaysian, Astro Talent Quest winner in 2001, Eric Lim Kien Fai. I am quite impress with him singing his rendition of the song 'My Way'.

*Spoiler* Recently, I gain a lot of traffic from this post about the show. Some people want to know who is the winner of the first season. Well, if you can't wait for the result show on AEC channel, the winner is Yoga Lin. Surprisingly, Aska Yang is the most popular guy in the show despite he didn't win after pulling out from the show for personal reason which has something to do with the controversy in the show about his age. And not to mention Jam Xiao's success too.

Here's the performance of the three guys (the first three contestants in this youtube are Aska Yang, Yoga Lin and Jam Xiao). If you are following up with season two, you might want to agree with me that this time, a girl is going to win.

One Million Star - Taiwan hottest pop culture phenomenon

Lately my sister has been so into this reality singing contest, One Million Star. It is the hottest Taiwan pop culture phenomenon in the year 2007. Currently AEC channel on Astro is showing the first season on Sunday night while the show is already in its season two.

This show is hosted by Matilda Tao with regular panel of judges which includes singers Phil Chang, Kay Huang, and Terry Lin, producers Yuen Wei Ren and Wang Wei Zhong, and image consultant Roger. The show also attracted many celebrity guest judges and performers, like Gary Chaw, S.H.E., Nicholas Teo, Kan Kan, Z-Chen Cheung, and David Huang.

The show started from a preliminary round of 100, and through months of singing challenges and elimination rounds, emerged with the top winner. Even before the show's conclusion, the final ten contestants, dubbed the Million Star Gang, had become huge stars throughout Taiwan, with a bestselling group album in the bag.

Last week, I managed to watch the show for the first time and I am lucky to be able to watch Jam Xiao perform. He is one of the guy who challenged the contestants and he is damn good. He is so good even A-Mei wants to duet with him in her new album. Check out this guy's singing because he really gives me goosebumps on this show last Sunday. And do check out his hairstyle which once upon a time looks like a lion hair (or rocker from the 80s).






Read the second part of my post here.