A-Mei
Kulilay Amit, better known by her stage name A-Mei, is a Taiwanese singer and record producer of Puyuma descent. Born as Amit Kulilay in eastern Taiwan, she made her debut in 1996. A leading figure of the Mandopop music scene since the mid-1990s, A-Mei is regarded for breaking ground for Taiwanese indigenous peoples and being a voice for LGBT rights and gender equality. She has been given the moniker "Queen of Mandopop" and the "Pride of Taiwan." Her career longevity, resilience, artistry, and versatility have established her as a pop culture icon in the Sinophone world.
Born and raised in Beinan, Taitung, Taiwan, A-Mei moved to Taipei at age 20 in 1992. In 1996, she released her debut studio album, Sisters, which saw major commercial success and sold over a million copies in Taiwan. Her sophomore record, Bad Boy, found even greater success, eventually becoming the country's best-selling album overall. Her follow up releases—Holding Hands, Can I Hug You, Lover? and Regardless —received critical and commercial acclaim, with the first two albums also selling well over a million copies. A cross-strait relations controversy caused her to experience a decline in sales in 2004; she would later experience a resurgence in 2006 with her album I Want Happiness?.
Her albums Truth, Amit, and Faces of Paranoia each won her a Golden Melody Award for Best Mandarin Female Singer, making her one of the singers who won the category the most times. Having sold over 50 million records, A-Mei is the best-selling female artist in Taiwanese music history. In 2002, Time named her one of the 20 most influential people in Asia. In 2017, she was included in the "Charity Heroes List" by the Asian edition of Forbes. She has embarked on eight concert tours since her debut, with the Utopia World Tour drawing over 2.5 million people.
Life and career
1972–1995: Early years and musical beginnings
A-Mei was born on 9 August 1972 in the Tamalakaw tribe in Beinan, Taitung, Taiwan. Her Puyuma-language name is Kulilay Amit, alternatively transliterated Gulilai Amit. She was the seventh child in a family of nine children. During her childhood A-Mei's family was impoverished, making it increasingly difficult to raise so many offspring. To support the family, the father originally wanted to give A-Mei and her younger sister Saya Chang to relatives for adoption. It was A-Mei's mother who took them to hide deep in the mountains to escape the fate of being adopted. Despite avoiding the fate of being separated from her family, A-Mei's upbringing was still quite difficult due to always being short on money. Although A-Mei couldn't receive formal training in music and stage performances, she showed her love for stage singing performances since she was a child. Like most Native Taiwanese people, she was exposed to tribal music very early on. Her mother used to record herself singing, then play it back on tape for her daughters to hear. A-Mei had always been fascinated by music, saying that she was addicted to the radio and would rush to watch the late night music programs that introduced her to English songs when she was a child. Oftentimes she summoned the children in the village and persuaded everyone to use flashlights to create "stage lighting effects" for her. In addition to her talent in music, A-Mei was also very good at sports. In elementary school, under the careful guidance of coach Shi Shunxiong, she earned a second-degree black belt and once represented her school in a taekwondo competition.In 1992 A-Mei left her hometown of Taitung for the first time to work in a restaurant and sell clothes at a roadside stand in Taipei. She first connected to the entertainment business by joining the televised "Five Lights Singing Contest" on TTV Main Channel in 1992 after encouragement from her father. She made it all the way through to the finals but lost in the final round.
She was disappointed and was almost ready to give up interest in music competitions. A-Mei's father then told her, "You definitely can sing, and you perform songs beautifully. Why don't you enter the competition again to show that you have a talent for music?" So, encouraged by the kind words from her father, she attended the singing contest again in 1993. Her performances enchanted the judges and she was crowned champion the following year. Unfortunately her father didn't live to see her victory due to him succumbing to his illness, leaving A-Mei devastated. Years later in 2009 when she released an album for the first time under her real name Amit, she sung the song "Disappear " which expresses how dearly she misses him. After winning the Taiwan TV Five Lights Awards program, he was invited by Japan Asia Airways to go to Japan to perform at the "World Music Tour" in Tokyo.
After her father's death, A-Mei struggled to recall her passion for music until 1995 when she began to sing in local pubs with a rock band called "Relax" which was formed by her musician cousin. Her pub performance impressed Taiwanese music producer Chang Yu-sheng and Chang Hsiao-yen, the head of Taiwanese record label Forward Music at the time; she signed a recording deal with Forward Music in March 1996.
1996–1997: Career beginnings, ''Sisters'', and ''Bad Boy''
After she signed a recording deal with Forward Music she made an appearance on Chang Yu-sheng's album, Red Passion, which was released on 12 July 1996, where they sang a duet titled "The One Who Loved Me Most, Hurt Me The Most." In November 1996, when A-Mei was invited to sing "I'm a Dreamer on Air," the theme song for Taiwan's UFO Radio station, she again drew attention from the public. On 13 December 1996, A-Mei released her debut album Sisters, which she made under the tutelage of Chang. Originally, the head honchos at Forward Music worried that A-Mei's aboriginal heritage would have a negative impact on the album's sales due to discrimination against aboriginal people still being widespread at the time. In spite of this, A-Mei still emphasized to the media that she was from an aboriginal background and was the very first Taiwanese mainstream pop star to proudly flaunt her aboriginal identity. On the contrary, the album Sisters became a runaway success. The album topped the Taiwan IFPI chart for nine consecutive weeks and sold a total of 1.21 million copies in Taiwan and four million in Asia. The sales result for Sisters surprised Forward Music, since they had no expectations of it being so well-received, who even forgot to sign her up for the 8th Golden Melody Awards .The songs on Sisters such as "You Don't Want Anything," "Released," "Cut Love " and the titular track enjoyed hefty radio airplay throughout the Sinophone world. On the album's titular track, Chang invited A-Mei's mother, sisters and other relatives to participate in the chorus singing and added Puyuma musical elements to make the song more culturally enriching. The outstanding sales of Sisters helped it become the fourth best-selling album in Taiwan overall. It won the top ten albums of the Chinese Musicians Exchange Association in 1997, and eventually was placed at No. 10 in the selection of the "200 Best Taiwanese Popular Music Albums."
On 17 May 1997, Billboard Magazine declared A-Mei Asia's most popular singer. On 7 June 1997, she released her second studio album titled Bad Boy. For this record Chang was still highly involved in the songwriting and production department. Bad Boy became A-Mei's second consecutive album to top the Taiwan IFPI chart for nine weeks, and sold 1.38 million copies, making it the most sold album in Taiwanese music history. Additionally it sold an excess of six million copies throughout Asia, making A-Mei one of the most powerful and sought-after celebrities in the continent. The album Bad Boy spawned numerous hit singles such as the title track, "Can't Cry," "Whenever I Think About You," "Dancing Alone " and "Listen to the Sea." They all have now been regarded as modern-day classics and are still receiving heavy rotation and being sung by contestants on televised major music competitions to this day. A-Mei performed songs from the album on her A-Mei Live In Concert 1998 concert tour the following year. Bad Boy earned her two Golden Melody Award nominations for Album of the Year and Best Mandarin Female Singer. However, tragedy struck five months after the album's release; her manager Chang died on 12 November 1997, at age 31, after falling into a coma for 24 days due to a car crash that occurred on 20 October 1997. During Chang's stay in the hospital, A-Mei visited him many times. At that time, to pay tribute to Chang who was dying, she released the CD single "Listen to You, Listen to Me." On 29 December 1997, she released the innovative album You Make Me Free Make Me Fly!, which featured the songs that were to be performed on her upcoming tour. The album was another hit, shipping 800,000 units in Taiwan and four million throughout Asia.
1998–1999: ''Holding Hands'', ''Can I Hug You, Lover?'' and ''A-Mei New Century Collection''
A-Mei embarked on her first solo concert tour which was in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, in January 1998. On 10 January 1998, A-Mei held her first large-scale ticketed concert titled A-Mei Live in Concert 1998, breaking the record for the shortest time a large-scale concert has been held by a Taiwanese singer since their debut. It also became the fastest-selling concert in Taiwan in the past decade and had a very fanatic audience, with both the Taipei and Kaohsiung shows being full houses. The two shows at the Singapore Indoor Stadium also set a number of records, including the record for the fastest sold-out concert: the first show was sold out within ten hours while the second was sold out within eight hours.Due to her immense fame, A-Mei was formally invited by the Japanese public broadcaster NHK to perform as a representative of Taiwan in the annual ceremony "Asia Live Dream" in February 1998. 12 October 1998, saw the release of her fourth studio album, Holding Hands. In the album, A-Mei sang the posthumous works "Are You Ready" and "Her Consciousness " of her mentor Chang Yu-sheng and for the first time collaborated with Taiwanese singer-songwriter David Tao, who had just risen in the music scene. He wrote and composed the songs "Don't Lie To Me " and "High High High." Continuing her winning streak of success, the album earned a RIT record certification by selling over 790,000 copies in the span of one month. Cumulative sales reached 1.1 million copies in Taiwan and four million in Asia. Holding Hands earned her a Golden Melody Award nomination for Best Mandarin Female Singer. Also in 1998, she won the Best Theme Song award at the Star Awards 1998 ceremony for her performance of the song "I Do Not Mind," which served as the opening theme song to the TV series Rising Expectations. On December 31, a New Year's Eve concert titled "Sisters Acting, Singing and Partying Through 1999" was held at Nangang in Taipei.
In January 1999, A-Mei endorsed Sprite in Sinophone territories, singing the song "Give Me Feelings " in the commercials. The commercial was filmed in Shanghai, which resulted in serious traffic jams around the shooting site. At this point she had won more than 30 awards in just two and a half years since her debut, and her total album sales exceeded ten million. In the past two years, she had been awarded consecutively. In the preceding year alone MTV selected her record as the best Mandarin album. A-Mei won the "Gold Award for Female Singer in the Music World" in the 1998 Ultimate Song Chart Awards Ceremony held by Commercial Radio Hong Kong and the "Asia Pacific Music Award" in the 1998 Top Ten Golden Songs Awards Ceremony. Winning "District's Most Popular Hong Kong Female Singer," she had become the only non-Hong Kong native and non-Hong Kong debut singer to win those two awards. On 20 April 1999, her EP entitled Feel was released and sold 180,000 copies, making it the best-selling mini-album in Taiwan's music history. On 8 June 1999, A-Mei released her fifth album Can I Hug You, Lover?. Carrying the momentum of the upcoming Mei Li 99 concert, the album sold more than 500,000 copies within its first week of availability in Taiwan, and was No. 1 on the IFPI chart for an eleven consecutive weeks, breaking the nine week championship record of her very own album Bad Boy. It sold a total of 1.18 million copies in Taiwan, and finally more than eight million copies in Asia, breaking the Asian sales record of six million copies of the highest-selling album in Taiwan, Bad Boy, to become A-Mei's highest-selling album in Asia to date. The album also earned her a Golden Melody Award nomination for Best Mandarin Female Singer.
In the following months A-Mei held her second Asia concert Tour, Mei Li 99, visiting various cities in Taiwan and other Asian cities, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing and Shanghai. She became the first Taiwanese singer to perform at the Shanghai Stadium, with the seats at the venue filled to the brim; it is notable that there were nearly 80,000 attendees attending the show, making it the most successful concert in that city's history. On 6 August 1999, she became the first artist to perform a concert at Beijing's Workers' Stadium. With more than 60,000 tickets sold, she broke the record for the highest number of spectators for a single performance in the city. More than 50,000 people poured into the two concerts at Hong Kong's now defunct Kai Tak Airport, making her the first and last Taiwanese singer to hold two ticketed concerts there. At the Taipei Municipal Stadium, she became the only female singer to "open the entire venue" to a crowd of nearly 50,000 people, thus being regarded as a major benchmark in Taiwan's concert history. A-Mei is also the first to perform in Taitung County by holding a large-scale ticketed concert at the Taitung County Stadium that attracted tens of thousands of people. In Singapore, she also became the first act to perform at the Singapore National Stadium; all the 35,000 tickets at that concert sold out completely. The tour held 14-concerts and attracted about 500,000 spectators, all told.
File:張惠妹與張學友在第36屆金馬獎頒獎晚會中演唱.jpg|thumb|A-Mei and Jacky Cheung singing together at the 36th Golden Horse Awards on 12 December 1999
At this point in time Eastern and even Wester papers had dubbed her popularity the "A-Mei syndrome." In the same year, A-Mei became the first Taiwanese artist to appear on the cover of Asia Weekly. Many people at the time even believed that she had the ability to inherit Teresa Teng's popularity in mainland China. In September 1999, she sang "Love, Never Disappears," a song composed by Wang Leehom, to honor the victims of the 921 earthquake and donated her concert revenue from that night in Singapore to charity. In December 1999, she performed with Jacky Cheung at the 36th Golden Horse Awards. A-Mei's so-called "sister power" became unstoppable at that point, and she was listed among the "Top Ten Chinese Voice Figures" in 1999 by Huasheng Magazine. On 28 December 1999, A-Mei released the greatest hits album A-Mei New Century Collection. It also became a hot seller, shipping 410,000 copies in Taiwan and 3 million copies in Asia. It is Taiwan's best-selling album by a female artist in the 21st century. On 31 December 1999, she participated in two New Year's Eve concerts in Taipei City.