Bic Runga is one of New Zealand’s most popular singers and has won numerous music awards beginning with her debut album Drive. One of the hit songs from that album, “Sway”, was featured in American Pie. Bic (pronounced Beck) is 26 years old and of Chinese and Maori ancestry. Thanks to northman for recommending her as a potential Asian sirens feature!

Here is another photo of her which I liked along with a more detailed bio and relevant links including one to a streaming video of her singing one of her hits “Get Some Sleep”:

A superstar in her native New Zealand while still in her teens, singer/songwriter Bic Runga was born in Christchurch in 1976; the product of a musical family — her mother was a Malaysian nightclub performer during the 1960s — she began playing the drums at the age of 11, and within a few years was also singing with local jazz groups. Upon learning guitar and keyboards, Runga began composing her first songs, and in 1994 she relocated to Auckland to pursue a professional music career. In 1995, aged 19, she made her Sony label debut with the single “Drive,” which rocketed into the Top Ten on the New Zealand pop charts and garnered her the prestigious 1996 Silver Scroll award, an honor given for excellence in songwriting. After touring in support of Neil and Tim Finn, Runga issued a follow-up single, “Bursting Through,” followed in 1997 by the Top Ten smash “Sway.” Her self-produced debut LP Drive appeared later that same year and garnered New Zealand’s top music awards. In the late ’90s, Bic Runga spent some time based in New York City, where she began writing songs for her follow-up album. She continued to work on new songs after returning to New Zealand, and embarked on a NZ tour with Tim Finn and Dave Dobbyn in August and September 2000, resulting in the 2001 release Together in Concert: Live. Runga’s Beautiful Collision hit stores in 2002; it was released internationally, and went 4x platinum in New Zealand, inspiring a re-release with a bonus disc the following year. 2003 also saw Runga found the record label Nu Shoo before kicking off another tour.

Streaming video of Bic Runga performing “Get Some Sleep”
Unofficial Bic Runga website
About Bic in her own words
Time Pacific: When Worlds Collide
Another good Bic Runga fansite
Official Bic Runga website by Sony Music

You will not find Norwegian-Vietnamese popstar Ngô Thanh Vân on Amazon.com, but you can read a review about her album ‘My Way’ at Visualgui.com. Be warned; it’s NOT very positive, but fun to read 😉 There is also a song there, so you can choose to listen for yourself. Her official websites seems to be down and so is another site that is supposed to be about her.

But here you can see a discography and I think you can also listen to her music somewhere, but since everything is in Vietnamese, I am not really sure… What I am sure of is, is that she is a beauty!

She started out as a fashion model, and still does modeling as I found her showing some new stuff in the Vietnam Airlines inflight magazine: Heritage Fashion edition, Aug-Sep 2005.This story at Vietnam News (March, 2004) speaks of her starring in Rouge, a 13-part MTV TV series that should have aired on MTV at the end of 2004. (Anyone knows if this happened?)

A Google image search will get you just a handfull of pictures, one kind of sexy, but poor quality.

If there are any fans out there, I will be happy to scan the remaining images from the magazine. Just say the word…

After my last post on up and coming Asian Australian singer/songwriter Sophie Koh, I thought I should also do a post on my favourite Asian Australian musician: Charlie Chan. Actually, as she is half Scottish Australian and half Chinese Malaysian, ‘Asian Australian’ is a very accurate description in her case. The music of this independent pianist and composer is a lot more ‘avant garde’ than Sophie’s, but that the way I usually like it!Sadly, she isn’t exactly prolific: she released her debut album, “The Adventures of Charlie Chan”, back in 1993, and has only released two more albums since! Also, it appears as though her web site hasn’t been updated since 2003. Being a very non-commercial artist, she has been a pioneer in selling music directly over the internet, starting the “Martian method” of distibuting music online, selling it through her Martian Music site (along with several other Australian independent artists). Her own site is quite personal, discussing her other passions such as meditation, yoga and cooking.

Let’s hope her present hiatus is only a temporary one, and she releases some more new music soon!

Although Sophie Koh has only just released her debut album “All the Pretty Boys”, this up and coming singer-songwriter has already created something of a stir in Australian music circles. Her album was produced by high profile Australian musician and producer Richard Pleasance (who also plays on the album), and features such internationally known musicians as drummer Paul Hester (from Crowded House), who tragically commited suicide recently. Sophie herself plays a wide variety of instruments on the album, from acoustic guitar to harmonica, piano, viola and accordian!Although she was born in New Zealand, her parents are Malaysian, and she grew up in Singapore – she now lives in Melbourne, Australia. Playing different instruments has always been her passion, starting with classical piano at 5. Her songs touch on such subjects as East Timor and asylum seekers (“boat people”), both hot political topics in Australia. She also has her own blog. Anyway, she has a lovely voice, and I recommend her album – definitely a new talent to watch out for. She’s currently touring Australia to promote her album.

Natalise was recently one of Maxim’s Girlfriend of the Day (thanks for the lead Gene). They only keep the last 5 girlfriends online as far as I can tell so if you missed it on Maxim, I have copied the mini-interview to my Asian Divas Yahoo Group.

Natalise is a Stanford graduate who is pursuing her dream of being the first big Asian American pop star. A good place to start is her official website natalisemusic.com (warning it is Flash based but was fast loading on broadband). In particular, she has a video clip and also music clips along with a photo gallery, bio, news, etc.

Here is a photo of Natalise performing:

Using google, I found a couple articles about Natalise written in 1993 (I later found they are also on her website but hard to read due to font size) in the google cache and have reposted them for convenience at:

Singer Natalise’s sky-high dream
Of Love and Natalise – SF Weekly cover story

Natalise is also on MySpace like most musicians and models. On MySpace, you can find more pictures of her and maybe get to know her better. Here are her MySpace pages:

Natalise music page including downloadable music clips
Natalise’s regular MySpace page

Speaking of sirens, Faye Wong is primarily known for her singing but I was very impressed with her acting in Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express. She is back on the silver screen again in Wong Kar Wai’s latest film 2046 which is where the above photo of her came from. She plays two roles in the film one of which is a fictional android character in the year 2046.

Faye Wong was born in Beijing. Her mother was a singer of “artistic traditonal songs” and her father is a Teresa Teng fan. Her family’s love of music influenced her growth towards that direction. She began voice training for 5 years during high school. After graduating high school, she started modeling for China Airlines but music was her first love or so she thought then.At the age of 18, she went to Hong Kong by herself in order to become a pop singer, participated in many auditions, and then signed a contract with Cinepoly. She debuted as a “Shirley Wong” called “A girl from North”, but she didn’t have the success she envisioned in her debut album “Shirley”. She had always wanted to see America and took an opportunity to study abroad. She studied music at Atlanta college in New York City then she came back to Hong Kong to record “Coming Home”. In 1992, “A broken-hearted woman” from that album was a smash hit and she became one of the greatest female pop stars in Hong Kong.

Afterwards, she continued her sucessful rise in the Asian music industry and became a role model for young Chinese girls everywhere dreaming to become musicians in their own right. She sold out her Circle Concert (180,000 tickets) in Hong Kong, America and Canada proving her overwhelming popularity worldwide. One of her more recent achievements is her “eyes on me” song that was a hit from the Final Fantasy VIII game further increasing her popularity and recognition.

For a more detailed biography of Faye Wong, take a look at her entry on wikipedia.

Faye Wong Appreciation Society has over 150 photos in their photo section including the one above (better than google image search selection).

I was looking for a good website featuring Faye Wong’s music with sample audio/video clips but didn’t come across one. Please post in the comment section if you know of any good websites featuring Faye Wong that you recommend!