a bit of detective work

I borrowed a Chinese CD from the library today. The cover kind of caught my attention -- it looked like good fun bubblegummy pop. In the past I've had good luck with CDs that have the same kind of look. And the only time I ever bought Chinese pop music (a record from the 1970s by a singer named Sandra) was a success. And it's not like there's a huge risk when I'm just borrowing from the library.

So I got the disc home and played it. Not bad. With the exception of a few tracks that are too slow. But I've paid for worse CDs and felt I got my money's worth.

The catch, of course, is that I don't speak, read or understand Chinese, so the album title, the song titles -- even the artist's name -- was a mystery. It could be a professions of everlasting love, or it could be exhortations to mass murder -- I wouldn't know the difference. But then, I realized I could leverage the power of the intertubes. The album was on Sony/BMG and had what seems to be a catalog number on it.  With a little help from Google, I know what I'm listening to.

The singer is Rainie Yang, who is aparently quite big in the Taiwanese pop world. It's her third album, My Other Self. Here's a video of the first song, which is either "Wolf" or "Wolf Coming" depending on which translation you prefer:

I feel like Sherlock Holmes.