November 9, 2010

Beauty in Audiophile Singers

Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the prettiest of them all?

Susan Wong from Hong Kong

Lily Chen from China


Olivia Ong from Singapore

Z Yan from Malaysia

Hi-Fi is a predominately male pursuit and it is definitely not sexy. It is ugly actually, with those big huge, non-descript boxes they called loudspeakers. But modern Hi-Fi is improving on aesthetics, no doubt.

That's not the main topic of this post. We are talking about female audiophile singers who are good-looking.

You echo: Very few. Not Many. Hardly.

Ok. Let's put voice/vocals aside, this is a purely man-to-man discussion on a different aesthetics aspect of Hi-Fi.

You can't even remotely call Cai Qin pretty, not even when she was young. Lily Chen, nah, not really. Cherrie Mah, yes, albeit in a petite frame. Jane Monheit, yes (and what a bod!). Joanna Wang, no. Susan Wong, not quite and not young.

I think to this writer, the prettiest of them all is Olivia Ong from Singapore, although Olivia has gone pop recently. Olivia is not exactly drop-dead gorgeous but easy on the eyes: sweet and demure enough to bring home to meet your parents, pretty enough to show off as a trophy to your male buddies. Dang, even enjoy your Hi-Fi together with you sitting besides you on the sofa!

Now we have a local lass to join in the competition. I haven't met her yet (I am not sure about Big E) but from the photos, she looks like a cutie. I am, of course, talking about the Bossa Princess, the latest discovery from our local audiophile label, pop pop music, whose jz8 album Big E just raved about. Rumors has it that she is going to release her Chinese Bossa Nova audiophile album end of this month and I heard from the horses' mouth that it is gonna be a cracker.

So, when your audiophile singer is gorgeous-looking, would it be psycho-acoustically better sounding? Would you fantasize that she sings for you, with you and at you, no one but you alone?

Would the highs be stratospheric and sweet, the mids rich, meaty, full-bodied, tangible and the lows bouncy, layered and voluptuous?

Certainly, I want my favorite female audiophile singers to be pretty, given a choice.

3 comments:

  1. HiFi Maverick,

    Nice piece there! Just from the few pics in the posting, I'd pick between Olivia Ong and Susan Wong!

    But both their music is a tad too generic for me.

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