Wu Qing-feng

Wu Qing-feng (; born 1982), also known as Wu Tsing-fong or Greeny Wu, is a Taiwanese singer-songwriter and the lead vocalist of Sodagreen. In addition to being the principal creative force for his own band, he has written songs for numerous artists. He won the 18th Golden Melody Award for Best Composer in 2007 and the 27th Golden Melody Award for Best Lyricist in 2016. He began a solo career in 2018 and released his debut studio album, Spaceman, the following year.

Early life and career beginnings Wu was born in Taipei, Taiwan and is the youngest son in the family. He went to The Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University (HSNU) and joined the school magazine club as the president and the art editor. He applied to study in the Department of Chinese Literature of National Chengchi University (NCCU) in 2000, double-majoring in the Department of Advertising and minoring in the Department of Business Administration and in the Department of Education.

Influences: music Without receiving any formal training, Wu taught himself piano and music theory out of interest. As Wu's elder sister started to learn to play the piano when he was an elementary school student, he used to observe her playing and practiced secretly when no one else was home. Wu enjoyed going to record shops and only listened to classical music, such as the works of Claude Debussy, Erik Satie along with several of his favorite composers.

When he was in junior high school, he listened to Faye Wong's album Sky given by his elder sister, and since then, he "has started to listen to all kinds of genres". He talked about it in an interview: "Retrospectively, that was the time when music was truly beautiful...from 1994 to 2000. To me, the songs of those years are the most impressive. It probably has something to do with my adolescence. Many of the songs from that time are even more trendy and edgier than those now". Wu is deeply inspired by the following music artists: Faye Wong, A-Mei, Faith Yang, Jeff Buckley, Tori Amos, Björk, Ringo Sheena, Radiohead, Chyi Yu and Ai Jing. Wu has often covered the works of the above artists in his performance.

Influences: writing Wu has always been highly sensitive to words. At the age of 3 or 4, he was taught to write Chinese characters by his grandfather. Whenever there were visitors coming, his grandfather would have him recognize words and recite newspaper aloud as a performance. Wu therefore was able to recognize a great number of words at a very young age. When he was an elementary school boy, he even edited a personal dictionary by comparing several dictionaries. When in college, Wu admired contemporary poets Hsia-Yu (Katie Lee, 夏宇) and Li Chen (陳黎). Qing-Feng's lyrics style has partially inherited the experimentalism and the deconstructive method linguistically and syntactically from the two poets. He also mentioned that the foundation of his lyrics writing may have been built along the process of word-recognition and his habit of reading Chinese dictionaries as a child.

Early works Wu first tried to create music when he was in the third year of senior high school after participating in the school music competition Tien-Yun Award (天韻獎). Although he signed up for the competition without having any works ready, he soon wrote his first song Peeping (窺) and more than a dozen songs were composed one after another in the same month. In the end, he won the championship in the Composition Category with his work Peeping and another championship in the Solo Singing Category by performing Tanya Chua's Ji Nian (紀念, Remember). Wu once mentioned that if he had not won first prize at Tien-Yun Award for Composition Category, he would not have realized that he was able to write songs and might have never thought about writing any other songs.

In order to sign up for NCCU Golden Melody (政大金旋獎) in 2001, he started the band Sodagreen with Claire Hsieh, Jyun-Wei Shih and his high school friend Xin-Ge (新哥). By covering Stefanie Sun's My Desired Happiness (我要的幸福), he entered the Solo Singing Final and the Composition Final at NCCU Golden Melody Award with his work Be Late For One Thousand Years (遲到千年). In 2002 Sodagreen participated in NCCU Golden Melody Award again and not only did they win the championship in the Team Category with the work Audiovisual And Illusion In The Air, but also won three more prizes, including the championship, Best Lyrics and Best Composition in Composition Category with the work Flying Fish (飛魚). From2001 to 2004, Wu completed more than 100 songs. About half of them became the works for Sodagreen and the rest of the songs were successively used by other artists.

Career

2004 – Present: Sodagreen

On May 30, 2004, Sodagreen had the concert School Rock at NCCU and released the single Audiovisual And Illusion In The Air (空氣中的視聽與幻覺) as their official debut. Since then, Wu has participated in various music collaborations as an individual aside from performing and releasing works with Sodagreen. The collaborations include:

In 2004, "Ms. Pheromone (費洛蒙小姐)" in the stage play Touching Skin (踏青去) is Wu's first music composition for the lyrics. In 2004, Faith Yang's song "Nu Jue (女爵, Dame)" is Wu's first custom-made work for an artist. In 2005, Wu featured in Makiyo Kawashima (川島茱樹代) 's studio album Makiyo and Rene Liu's studio album Heard.

2018 – present: Solo work On January 1, 2017, Sodagreen finished their final performance and went hiatus. After taking a break for a year, Wu announced to embark his solo career officially in Spring 2018, attending Spring Wave Music and Art Festival (春浪音樂節) in May as the first performance of his return. Since going solo, Wu has dabbled in numerous new fields, including self-teaching formal music arrangement on computer, releasing the EP Everybody Woohoo that is pop-oriented, mentoring participants in the idol-oriented talent shows.

In June 2018, Wu took part in the talent show The Coming One 2 (明日之子 第二季) produced by Tencent Video. He was a "Xing Tui Guan (星推官)", an advisor as well as a judge, in the "Du Xiu Sai Dao"(獨秀賽道, Solo Race Track) of the show, leading participants including Wei-Ze Cai (蔡維澤), Lumi Xu (許含光), Yi-Hao Zhang (張洢豪) and Yu-Ming Ceng (曾育茗). In January 2019, Wu attended the talent show Singer 2019 (歌手2019) produced by Hunan Television as a "Chuan Jiang Ren"(串講人, host) and also joined the competition in the show. In September 2019, Wu released his debut solo album Spaceman and started his Space In Space (太空備忘記) Concert Tour which was unfortunately cancelled in 2020 due to the outbreak of COVID-19. On November 14 and 15 2020, at Cloud Gate Theater in Tamsui, Wu had Recto and Verso (上下冊) Concert, combining music performance with theatrical elements to create a brand new show experience.

Artistry Lyrics Wu's lyrics have introduced the art of literacy to Mandopop. The topics range from the gazes at personal life experiences to the social depiction and its allegory. In 2009, Qing-Feng's Be Late For One Thousand Years was selected to be a rhetoric material in the Chinese textbook for the second-year junior high school students.

Vocals Wu is good at singing with mixed voice ( a mixture of true voice and falsetto voice close to head voice), and with his nasal resonance, he can transit between true voice and falsetto seamlessly. His singing technique has forged a genderless voice. Wu's way of singing also has something to do with his deviated nasal septum. His vocal range lies between A2 to C6, stretching over 26 intervals and owning more than 3 octaves, making him a singer with a very wide vocal range in Mandopop.

Personal life Wu does not celebrate his birthday in any form, let alone receive gifts. He is used to taking his birthday light because he sees the day of his birth as the day of his mother's suffering. Having his birthday mentioned by others agonizes him. He mentioned that his friends do know about his disinterest in celebrating his birthday.

Solo discography Extended plays Everybody Woohoo (feat. 9m88) Everybody Woohoo (Dizparity Remix) Everybody Woohoo Everybody Woohoo (Oberka Remix)2ndPeeping/When I am Missing YouUniversal MusicDecember 6, 20198cmCD Peeping (20 Year Anniversary Edition) Storm feat. Aurora A Wanderer In The Sleeping City feat. Rufus Wainwright 哥倫布的蛋 (The Egg of Colombus) feat. Robin Guthrie Storm (Chinese Version) feat. Aurora

Studio albums 譯夢機 Dream Translator 回音收集員 The Echo Collector 巴別塔慶典 The Carnival In Babel 太空人 Spaceman 傷風 Influenza 失憶鎮 The Forgotten Town 太空 Space 水仙花之死 Death Of Narcissus 男孩莊周 Boy Zhuangzi 太空船 Spaceship 線的記憶 Story~Lines 上冊 (CD 1) 〈費洛蒙小姐〉 〈我會我會〉 〈沙灘上的佛洛一德〉 〈最難的是相遇〉 〈阿茲海默〉 〈穿牆人〉 〈柔軟〉 〈低低星垂〉

下冊 (CD 2) 〈寧靜海〉 〈等〉 〈年輪說〉 〈困在〉 〈一點點〉 〈迷幻〉 〈月亮河〉

上冊 （......小小牧羊人） (（......The Little Shepherd）) feat. 微光古樂集 The Gleam Ensemble （......海妖沙龍） (（......Siren Salon）) feat. 蜷川紅 （......催眠大師） (（......The Great Hypnotist）) feat. Maîtrise Saint-Marc - Les Choristes （......戀人絮語） (（......Fragments d'un Discours Amoureux）) feat. 林嘉欣 Karena Lam （......千與千尋） (（......Spirited Away）) feat. 佐藤芳明 Yoshiaki Sato （......老頑固博士） (（......Doctor Headstrong）) feat. 老頑固博士 Dr. Jean-Loup Ringot （......當幽靈失靈） (（......When the Ghost Got Lost）) feat. Yoed Nir （......醉鬼阿Q） (（......Drunkard Ah Q）) feat. 孫燕姿 Stefanie Sun （......棕髮少女） (（......Brown Haired Girl）) feat. 小野麗莎 Lisa Ono （......侏儒之舞） (（......Dance of the Gnomes）) feat. Jasmine Sokko （......小王子） (（......Le Petit Prince）) feat. 大橋三重唱 Trio Ohashi （......睡美人） (（......Sleeping Beauty）) feat. 嚴俊傑 Chun Chieh YenAlbum

Singles YearTitleReleased DateNotes"Jian Yu Fu Sheng" (作為怪物, As A Monster)May 21, 2019Digital single, duet with Yuchun Li. "Right Here Waiting for you" (我在原地等你)November 6, 2019Digital single, the theme song of movie Right Here Waiting for You."My Shadow, My Shelter"

Songwriting and collaboration Qing-Feng wrote his first song "Peeping" in 2000 and won the championship at HSNU Tien-Yun (Heavenly Melody) Award when he was in the third year of senior high school. Since then, Qing-Feng has been very productive as his accumulated works, both published and unpublished, are over hundreds. 90 percent of the songs in Sodagreen are written by Qing-Feng. He also writes songs and lyrics for his fellow artist friends from Hong Kong and Taiwan, such as A-mei, S.H.E, Kay Tse, Alan Tam, Mr., Jolin Tsai, Coco Lee, Angela Zhang, Sandy Lam, Rainie Yang, JJ Lin, Yoga Lin, Jeff Chang, Eason Chan, Paige Su, Denise Ho, Mavis Fan, Waa Wei, Yolanda Yuan, Wan Fang, Jam Hsiao, Gigi Leung, Joey Yung, Aska Yang, Tanya Chua, Cyndi Wang, Stefanie Sun, Valen Hsu, Karen Mok, Ricky Hsiao, Terence Lam, Lala Hsu, Rene Liu and others.

Other contributions

Concerts

Space In Space Concert Tour (2019–2020) 16 Leaves Concert (2020) Recto and Verso Concert (2020)

Host

Filmography CategoriesTitleReleased DateNotesRefMicro FilmZhi You Ke Yi (Only Possible)September 21, 2012Commissioned by : Mian Is... Director& Film Editor: Jimmy Cho

Assistant Director: Nai Wei Liu

Producer: April Lee

Director Manager: Claire Hsieh

Artist Assistant: Hsiang Huang

Make up: Wan-Ting Chang

Special Thanks: Jing-Yi Chen, Chicken Rice, Zoom In

The theme song and the lyrics of micro film Zhi You Ke Yi (Only Possible) is written by Qing-Feng

Artist: Sodagreen

Publications TitleReleased DateNotesTu Yi's Folktales (Auntie Tu's Folktales)August 7, 2017The book is a limited edition merch as well as Wu's first creative work, first print and 500 copies only, for his Birthday Concert A Le!! Qian Tian Bu Shi Cai 39 Sui Ma! (What!! Wasn't I Just 39 Years Old The Day Before Yesterday!) and Absurd Photography Exhibition Qi Ji No Yi Shun (The Miraculous Moment).

Awards and nominations