The 200 Best Taiwanese Popular Music Albums

In 1994, while the student movement was in its ascendancy, for the passionate students at National Taiwan University idealism was the order of the day. One such young woman, an editor for NTU Cultural Digest, was putting her spare time every weekend to use on one such idealistic project, the brainchild of NTU Cultural Digest head Wu Qingsheng and Ma Shifang with the support of Ma's mother, radio host Tao Shiao-ching. That project was the compilation of a book that went on to be tremendously well received: The Top 100 Albums in Taiwan Popular Music.

Setting strict judging criteria, they invited over 100 judges to vote on their picks for the best 100 albums released in the Taiwan popular music market between 1975 and January 1993. They also had short essays written up about each album, organized the layout themselves, and funded the printing out of their own pockets. Computers were still not common at the time, and so compiling the book took almost two full years. While it was a work of impressive scope and quality, the marketing was still a student effort, and so the first run was only 4000 copies, which were sold at Tangshan Bookstore near NTU. Since those ran out, it has been out of print.

Nonetheless, with its high quality, idealism, and literary character, the book was both a good read and an excellent guidebook to music in Taiwan. For audiences that grew up listening to folk songs, it was a chance to relive their pasts in detail-the changing, yet unchanging work of Luo Ta-you as he moved from Zhi Hu Zhe Ye to Hometown; the astonishing power and conflict of Simon Hsueh's Life....; the birth of taike rock with Wu Bai's track "Dust of Angels," from the soundtrack album of the same name, and Bobby Chen's New Formosa Band and their self-titled album. For those new to the field of popular music, they can trace back through Qiuqiu Choir and Tianshui Music Collective, and the album that sparked the folk music movement, A Collection of Modern Chinese Folk Music. Others were glad to see their favorites-like Sandy Lam, Ukulele, and Hung Jung-also getting the attention of the judging panel.

That music criticism, at the time fresh and full of the vigor of youth, has since become a vital part of local music criticism history. The simple idealism of that book has even been the motivator for many who ventured out into the world of music. And even more incredibly, some of those 4000 copies somehow made their way to mainland China, becoming the tattered, dog-eared bible of popular music for mainland music fans. Some uploaded copies of the book to the Internet, while others have bundled the 100 albums into compilations of MP3s, helping them spread the gospel.

What no-one realized at the time is that that would be the golden age of popular music in Taiwan. In 1993, Hong Kong pop star Jacky Cheung released Kiss Goodbye, which would sell an unprecedented 1.36 million copies, followed later by million-selling albums from Judy Chiang and Chang A-Mei. By 2000, however, illegal downloading of songs had cut into profits and the market was becoming fatigued; even the boom in popularity of karaoke couldn't help rising stars like David Tao, Stefanie Sun, and Jay Chou get even a third of the sales of Kiss Goodbye. In 2007, even the "hit" album from Taiwanese American Idol clone One Million Stars sold only 180,000 copies.

Record stores are closing one by one, albums are being leaked as MP3s, and modern popular music has become a largely faceless entity. My friend Lin Yijun, the student mentioned above, has become chief editor at a major publishing company, working hard to sneak some of her own ideals in under the auspices of commercial interests. She and a few friends who have continued down the musical or publishing paths since those days at NTU have once again come to the forefront with this year's release of The 200 Best Taiwanese Popular Music Albums. Not only does this new edition build on the past with a "new 100" covering 1993 through 2005, it also boasts a revised "old 100," with both combined into a single elegant volume.

Unlike the old version, the new 100 has been subjected to heated debate online since its release. Some music fans have drafted long lists of what they see as oversights: How could the likes of Chyi Chin, Anthony Yiu-ming Wong, Tseng Shu-chin, Wan Fang, and Leslie Cheung be left out? Have Jay Chou and Wang Leehom really still not surpassed David Tao? Are acts like Amis elder Difang really classifiable as "popular music"? And what on earth are F.I.R. doing in there? Some readers in mainland China have written out essays over 10,000 characters in length sincerely and insightfully critiquing this new list.

In all fairness, this new 100 is part of a music market much more complex than its forerunner and an environment of free, open debate and challenging of authority, so there was no way it would ever reach the hallowed status the old 100 enjoys. But the passage of time aside, the fact that there were only 26 judges for the new 100 is a technical shortcoming and a genuine source of potential bias and split votes.

Honestly, when I first picked up the new book, I went through a period of infuriating myself with the list, particularly when I found my own beloved Karaoke, Taipei, and Me by Chang Yu-sheng ranked only 88th.

That was until I read this response by Ma Shifang to Internet critics:

"I really hope that we will see different top 100s, top 50s, top 10s, and so forth for different media as time passes. Debate is healthy and everyone has their own standards and points of view. I really hope more people will be willing to form their own, better groups of judges and create a better selection process for albums, and that the influence of our own list of 200 albums, which has taken us over a decade to compile, will actually become less and less over time."

I couldn't help but smile at this. No list, no matter how carefully selected, will please everyone, let alone when you're trying to follow up a list as hallowed as the old 100! These courageous fools bit the bullet and gave this their all, not out of a desire to express their own preferences and favorites, but rather to give us another look at some gems that may have been lost in the sands of time.

Whether it's Superband, performing for all they and their combined age of almost 200 are worth, or the hard work of the relative youngsters who crafted this 200-strong list out of a desire to spark discussion and better works in future, it is clear that popular music is an indispensable part of Taiwan's cultural world. We can only hope that both musicians and critics alike can achieve their goals, rather than becoming fading memories of better days.

Fifteen years ago, a group of students produced and published a book listing the top 100 albums in Taiwanese popular music, a work that showed the idealism and vibrancy of youth throughout.