After gaining wide popularity in the film industry and through blogging, Chinese actress, director and blogger Xu Jinglei has finally jumped onto the singing bandwagon, proving the versatile star also has potential in music.
A stage-set press conference was held at the Beijing Film Studio on Thursday for Xu Jinglei's first musical release, titled Dream Sheds Lights on Reality.
Since Xu is an actress and the song was written for her new film with the same title, the event's venue was specially designed as a mini-stage set.
After three brief performances of Xu's childhood and introductions by distributor Song Ke and producer Huang Shaofeng, Xu Jinglei appeared and explained the reason why she started singing.
"Actually, I think singing is a hard step for me to take. In light of promotion for my latest film and the song possibly adding more recognition for the film, I decided to have a try."
Huang Shaofeng, one half of the producer duo Mars Radio, said she was not as bad as she had previously thought.
"Her understanding of music, expression of lyrics and voice are actually quite charming and nice."
Xu has taken advantage of her popularity on the Internet through blogging and joined Taihe Rye's Digital Music Distribution platform to promote and release her first music work through the Internet and mobile phone.
Song Ke, renowned musician and CEO of the distribution company Taihe Rye Music explains, "Listeners can download this song from authorized websites or through their cell phones for a fee. Up until now, Lao Xu's song has topped the download list, which has reached 50 thousand times in two or three days."
Though not yet a professional singer, Xu's release will certainly be a nice dessert before the film's release in China at the end of this month.
(CRI June 16, 2006)