Thursday, April 8, 2010

Lin Yu Chun

As a rule, I don't watch any of the numerous talent shows on TV. Most of the time, its just a parade of talentless plebs debasing themselves for the amusement of others. I guess this also explains their popularity...

Anyway, I have to admit that, once in a while, someone with real talent will show up and blow away the audience and viewers at home. Of course, the cynic in me believes that anything half way decent looks great as its surrounded by a mountain of crap.
:D

The latest sensation to make its way around the interwebz is the Taiwanese kid Lin Yu Chun. You can hear him singing "I will always love you" in the video below and regardless of my comments before, you have to admit that he does have an impressive voice.



PS In the interest of full disclosure, I do have to admit that unlike most reality TV shows, talent shows do at least have some value. At the very least, they give people with talent a chance to show that talent to a worldwide audience that they otherwise would never have gotten. Lets face it, people like Paul Potts and Susan Boyle would never have gotten record deals if it hand't been for talent shows.

4 comments:

kkch said...

The sad thing is that it is always their first appearance on the reality show which had the magic.

I didn't have the "electric" feeling anymore when I hear Susan Boyle in the 2nd round.

Jokemeister said...

joA lot of that probably has to do with the expectations gap.

Before you even see them, you may well have seen a plethora of talentless hacks butchering your eyes and ears. And then on strolls an ugly duckling. It may not sound very PC but before you know anything about them, all you have to judge them on is their appearance.

Look at Susan Boyle and "little fatty". In terms of appearance, they are not what you would normally call good looking. And the plethora of crap that you had to watch before would have conditioned you to expect more crap.

And then, suddenly, a good voice! At this point, you don't even need a great voice - the sudden change from crap to good is enough for you to fall on your knees screaming - Hallelujah!

By the second time you see time, your expectations have gone up and you suddenly see all the flaws in the performance that you may have missed the first time around.

Or I could just be overly cynical...

I also wonder if the Lin Yu Chun video is actually a good example of this in action. If you look around the interwebz when this video first went viral, people were saying that he sings better than Whitney Houston.

Now, to be fair, I haven't heard her singing in years so I have no idea what her voice is like now but her original rendition of this song far outclasses Lin Yu Chun (good as he is). But then, I think that Whitney Houston used to be an outstanding singer so the comparison may not be entirely fair.

Anyway, despite the fantastic showing in this video, I believe Yu Chun has actually been voted off the talent show now. So I guess the "electric" feeling didn't last for a lot of other people either.

kkch said...

perhaps he deliberately lose the competition in order to get a career outside of the TV company (otherwise the TV company will bond him for some years). Heard that Sony is interested to sign him up.

Jokemeister said...

hmm - you would think there would be more than just "interest" if he deliberately lost the competition. Otherwise, seems like a pretty big risk.