Joey Yung

Joey Yung Cho-Yee (Traditional Chinese 容祖兒; Simplified Chinese 容祖儿; Cantonese: Yung Cho-Yee; Mandarin pinyin: Róng Zǔ'ér (born June 16, 1980) is a popular female Chinese singer and actress from Hong Kong. She is an artist of the Emperor Entertainment Group. She won the "Most Popular Female Singer Award" on Jade Solid Gold in 2003 with her hit, "My Pride" and won the same prize in 2004, 2005, and 2006, thus emerging as one of the premier Cantonese singers in the world. At age 15, Joey participated in many singing contests, including the Big Echo Karaoke Singing Contest, in which she was given the opportunity to be an artist of Go East Entertainment Co. Ltd.. However, her talent did not win recognition of the company. Go East ended the contract with Joey soon after the song "The First Time I Want to be Drunk," which is the theme song of a movie, was recorded. The song is Joey's only song produced by Go East. Afterwards, she continued with school while working as a clerk and helping her mother in managing the business of a fashion boutique. She was later introduced to Golden Pony Records Co. Ltd. by an ex-colleague of Go East. Not long after she joined the company, it withdrew its business in Hong Kong. Joey's singing career was once again terminated. A couple of years after, she followed Roman Tam, the godfather of Canto-pop, to learn singing. Joey as a Newcomer (1999-2000) In 1998/1999, Joey joined Emperor Entertainment Group. Her talent was appreciated and she was sent abroad for training to enhance her singing skills in 1999. As this was also the same company her mentor Roman was in, she also toured with Roman which helped her gain experience as a performer. On 30 September 1999, her debut album EP was released. It charted on the IFPI Album Charts (based on sales) for 23 weeks, breaking the record for the most consecutive weeks on the IFPI album chart in Hong Kong, and sold 130,000 copies in Hong Kong alone. In later prize-giving ceremonies held by different media organizations, she won many awards together with Cecilia Cheung, who was regarded as a formidable adversary of Joey. In January 2000, Joey's apartment was set ablaze. In the same year, she made an appearance in her first movie 'Winner Takes All' and her first TV drama series 'The Green Hope'. That year, she released two CDs, including her second EP, "Don't Miss," and her first studio album, "Who Will Love Me." At the same time, she became the spokesperson of many brands, like Four Seas, the Red Cross, and Netvigator. Her career flourished with her increasing exposure. She held her first concert at the prestigious Hong Kong Coliseum, titled 'Joey Yung's See You Everywhere Live Concert.' Ups and Downs of a Rising Pop Princess (2001-2002) In 2001, she released her first compilation album 'Love Joey', which later on became the Best Selling Album of the Year. This is considered very impressive for a singer that has been around for less than 2 years. She then released two Cantonese albums, All New Summer Holiday and Solemn on Stage. In November, she held her second live concert and first concert series, 'H20+ Solemn on Stage Joey Yung Live in Concert 2001' at the Hong Kong Coliseum and began her singing career in Taiwan after she released her first Mandarin album 'Honestly'. By the end of the year though, her career reached a crisis as a result of strained vocal cords and criticism of being plump. In 2002, she was approved by her company to take a rest while learning dancing and make-up abroad. After two months of rest, she came back to Hong Kong and released her Canto-pop album 'Something About You'. She then became the spokesperson of Nissin and Nikon. At the end of the year, she released her second collection album 'Love Joey II'. Breakthrough as the newest Pop Queen (2003) In 2003, her song 'My Pride', also the theme song of the TV commercial of Banyan Garden developed by Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited, became well-known among the public. This song was awarded 'The Most Popular Song in the Nation' by RTHK. She became the spokesperson of a slimming parlor. In the fad of slimming in Hong Kong, Joey also had her body slimmed and presented herself as a sexy image. She held her third concert 'Joey Yung Live Show Up!' in Hong Kong Coliseum, which pushed her career to even higher heights, and she was soon named as 'Canto-pop Queen of Hong Kong'. At the end of the year, she was awarded the 'Most Popular Female Singer' in all prize-giving ceremonies held by the media. She was the second youngest singer in history to have won this prize (youngest being Anita Mui). She also won another female singer award, the "Best Female Singer Gold" award at the CRHK Music Awards, and was the youngest singer to ever win this award. Following this, she began her world-wide tour including Canada, Australia, U.S., Mainland China, Macau, Malaysia with her "Show Up concert" throughout 2004 to 2005. Hong Kong's Reigning Pop Queen (2004-2006) In 2004, Joey continued her sexy image in her CD album 'Nin9 2 5ive' and her first photo album 'The Real Joey, Glamour in London'. Her photo album was greatly accepted by the public and ran out of stock shortly after its release. Her second album in 2004, 'Give Love A Break', was greatly appreciated by the public. She won the 'Most Popular Female Singer' prize of TVB and "My Favorite Female Singer" presented by the Commercial Radio, and many other honorable awards. Around Christmas, a Cantonese remake of 'Chihuahua' (a song previously released in English by DJ Bobo) was sung by Joey as part of a Coca-Cola advertising campaign which included a portrayal of her buying a can of Coca-Cola. She won more than 20 awards and received the highest honor award again, The Media Award, which is given to the singer who accumulated the most awards from the 4 music award ceremonies in Hong Kong. In 2005, Joey released her compilation album, Love Joey 3, and a Canto-pop album, Bi-Heart. Advertising her concert, Reflection of Joey's Live, which spanned eight days in October and November, Joey exhibited a very sexy image in the promotion poster. The theme song of the concert, 好事多為, was arranged and keyboarded by a Korean composer, which is a rare practice in Hong Kong. Funded by Sony Ericsson, EEG found the top production crew to produce the MTV of the theme song. Unlike the concerts she held before, she had invited many guests and added more dancing elements, which were greatly appreciated. After the concert, Joey suffered from sore throat owing to the strain in her vocal cord. Several days after, she worked without chatting with other people with a view to let her vocal cord relax. Under the heavy workload, she hardly managed to spend several days receiving acupuncture treatment in Nanjing to have her voice restored. Recommended by a producer Joey then started to take singing lessons with popular entertainment voice coach Christine Samson. On Christmas Day, in the prize giving ceremony held by the Metro Radio Hong Kong, she won eight awards, being the artist to have gained the most prizes. Sales of all her CDs reached over 5 million copies in 2004, which is impressive, as Canto-pop CD sales are usually about 100,000 copies. She has also won IFPI Best Selling Singer Awards since she started her career. It is also estimated that the total income from field of advertisements in 2004 was about HK $10 million. In 2005, she has purchased two connecting flats named The Legend at Jardine's Lookout, Hong Kong for HKD $40 million. It is not surprising that she has invested since she has earned more than HKD $60 million last year. In January 2006, she has received many awards such as the most popular female singer award for the consecutive third time. She has also won other awards such as Golden song etc. During the Hong Kong IFPI record sales awards 2005, for the 2nd year in a row, Joey was the best selling female artist. Two of her albums (Love Joey II and Joey Yung X Hacken Lee The Music Is LIVE 903 Id Club Concert) were of the top 10 selling albums. Following the success of the 8-night "Reflection's of Joey's Live Concert," her concert CD/VCD/DVD combined to have a sales of triple platinum (120,000 copies), quite a rare accomplishment in today's Cantopop Industry. On February 27, 2006, Joey released the album "Ten Most Wanted". More time was put in the production of this CD than any of Joey's previous CDs. Joey said she wanted to experiment with new musical styles and work with different musicians. One of the musicians behind this CD is well praised by Joey, Mavis Faan, who wrote the music of two of the ten songs, Get Fit with Jane Fonda and Torn Tongue (lyrics of both songs written by Yiu Fai Chow). Both songs are fast songs that are completely different from the previous Joey songs. Close Up (2007+) At the end of December, Joey released her Cantonese album Close Up. Songs include "Burst of Joy & Beautiful Flowers" (her first collaboration with Hanjin), her biggest hit last year "Splendid Unexpected Meeting", and her third and latest plug, "One Love One Lesson". The album received good response from the general public, and the first version is out of stock at online CD stores like Yesasia. Many people reported that it was sold out in stores all over Hong Kong. She released the second version on January 26, which included a bonus DVD with the music videos for "Splendid Unexpected Meeting" and "Burst of Joy & Beautiful Flowers". She was the biggest winner of the female singers at the four 2006 year end music awards (16), won the best CD seller among all the female singers, and was the most popular female singer in Asia. At the end of January, Neway helped organize a musical for Joey, entitled, "Safari". Joey was touched by the performers -- which included Anthony Wong, at17, Hins Cheung, Yumiko Cheng, Vincent Wong, and Sun Boy'z -- and fans that came out to help make the musical possible. She hopes to perform "Safari" again very soon. She held a concert in Malaysia in April. On 7 July, 2007 she performed at the Chinese leg of Live Earth in Shanghai. Ambassador Joey was selected to be Hong Kong's ambassador of "30 Hour Famine", which is organized by the World Vision. She visited Kenya in March 2007, and shared many of her thoughts about this trip on her blog and on radio interviews. Joey will release her 5th Mandarin album titled "Little" on July 5th. The title track was produced by Jay Chou.