Houston Community News >> Chinese Singer Evonne Hsu
8/1/2007-- Evonne Hsu (born on
December 5, 1979, in Longview, Texas, USA) is a Golden Melody Award winning,
American-born-Chinese (ABC) pop singer.
Longview is a small rural town, about five hours from Houston, Texas. She
attracted attention at an early age as one of the few Chinese girls in her town.
She grew up with a passion for singing and dancing, but she did not dream of
becoming a superstar when she went into University of Texas at Austin to pursue
her study in psychology. It was during her university study that one of her
friend (a musical arranger) convinced her to make a singing demo; the friend
then took the demo tape to Taiwan Core Agency. The executive at the agency
(later the director at Universal Music) was impressed with her and flew to Texas
to sign her and nurtured her as future superstar. Since she was planning to
visit her grandparents in Taiwan anyway, she decided to meet with the executive
team at Core to discuss a contract and agreed with the deal. With the consent of
her parents, she spent a year in Taiwan working on her Mandarin language.
Meantime, Core Agency secured a record contract with Universal Music and shortly
after, she debut with her album To Be Happy in January 2002. Universal invested
heavily in the album, recording in the studio for over a month and sending her
to Korea to shoot her music video with the same team who had worked with Boa,
SES, and Shinhwa. The album was a hit for her (sold an impressive 100,000 copies
in its first six months), who was immediately rising to fame and gaining
recognition for her talent, looks and personality, and her singing talent was
acknowledged by winning various Best Newcomer awards in Hong Kong and Taiwan,
including the prestigious Taiwan Golden Melody Awards.
She never looks back and continues to explore new grounds to this day. She has
since then continued with her many successes, winning numerous awards, and was
even hand-picked by famous Hong Kong singer, Jacky Cheung, to star as the
leading female character, "Snow" in the mandarin version of his self-created
musical, "Snow Wolf Lake". She received rave reviews for her performance of
"Snow", confirming to audiences in Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Malaysia and Taiwan that she can not only sing pop songs, but shows great
versatility and surprising skill in her singing, acting and dancing. She has
been seen in countless television advertisements, and is one of the most famous
pop singers in Taiwan and many parts of Asia.
So far, she has recorded six albums: To Be Happy (January 2002), Lonely Ballet
(September 2002), Beautiful Love (July 2003), Happiness (June 2004), Chosen One
(November 2005) and Mystery (October 2006). Her recently released album includes
a hit song called "Poem Water Snake Mountain Temple" composed by pop guru Jay
Chou.
She performed at the Chinese leg of Live Earth in Shanghai this month.
She wants people to like her because of her music. And considering her fans are
mostly students, she wants to be a good role model so their parents will have a
positive opinion of her (and buy more of her albums, lol). She has always taken
care to present a straight, wholesome image. When selecting outfits, she tends
to be conservative. She has this fear that too much will be exposed by accident.
Fans may take pictures and upload them onto the Internet.
She has also published her own books.
(Contributed by Seven Castles)