Stefanie Sun: Encyclopedia II - Stefanie Sun - Overview

Stefanie Sun - Overview

Stefanie Sun was born on July 23, 1978 to Sng Yeow Hong (孙楊黃; Sng Iû-hông) and Sng Ee Kwai (孙燕佳; Sng Yì-koai). She has an elder sister by 3 years (孙燕佳 Sng Yì-kiah) and a younger sister by 6 years. (孙燕美; Sng Yì-bī).

Stefanie studied in St Margaret's Secondary School, Raffles Girls' School and St Andrew's Junior College and later majored in marketing at Nanyang Technological University. She made her musical debut in June 2000 with the release of her first, self-titled album, Yan Zi (孙燕姿) under Warner Music. She is arguably the most popular local artist in her native Singapore, being one of the major award-winning Chinese popular musicians from the country. Her meteoric rise in the Mandarin pop music scene seems to have inspired many more Singaporean artists to expand overseas. Local artists who have made it big in Taiwan, Mainland China, and Hong Kong following her include JJ Lin and Huang Yi Da.

Although she is Singaporean, she does most of her recording and publicity in Taiwan, where she is also arguably one of the most popular artists.

Most of her songs are sang exclusively in Mandarin, with several in English. One notable exception is the song 天黑黑 which she sings in both Mandarin and her native dialect Teochew. It is an adaptation of a traditional Teochew folksong which included the first six words in the original Teochew - "Thi-o·-o·, beh lo̍h-hō·" - in the chorus.

She has won over 33 awards and other accolades for her music in the course of her career in Singapore, Taiwan, mainland China and Hong Kong (as well as at the pan-Asian MTV Asia Awards).

Most of her albums are titled in both Chinese and English.

She also sang the official theme songs for Singapore's National Day Parade for 2002 and 2003: "We Will Get There" (一起走到) and "One United People" (全心全意), respectively.

She collaborated with Mai Kuraki, a Japanese singer, on the last track of her To Be Continued... album. They collaborated again in 2003, this time on Mai Kuraki's If I Believe, released in July of 2003. One month after the second collaboration, Stefanie decided to take a one year break from making music, and returned in late 2004 with a new album titled "Stefanie", intended to be a mirror of her debut album (self-titled as well, but in Chinese). This was to symbolise her return with a newcomer's attitude. She also started her own company, Make Music, during this sabbatical.

A Perfect Day was released on 2005, almost one year after the previous album Stefanie. She collaborated with some of the best musicians from Taiwan, namely MayDay (五月天) and F.I.R. in the song, 'First Day'.

Reviews of this new album has been mixed because of rumors in sales. But Stefanie had mentioned before that her priority is to make quality music, and not commercialized products that can only sell well but losing out in artistic form.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Overview", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki