Wu Bai's bio

Wu Bai is a Taiwanese rock singer and songwriter. He formed the band Wu Bai & China Blue with Dean "Dino" Zavolta on drums, Yu Ta-hao (aka “Big Cat”) on keyboards, Chu Chien-hui on bass guitar and Wu Bai himself on lead guitar and lead vocals. Labeled "the king of live music," Wu Bai is considered to be one of the biggest rock music stars in East and Southeast Asia.

Wu Bai listened to 1970s English-language rock music such as Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix in his formative years and has said he felt it unusual for a Taiwanese person to play the guitar. Prior to Wu Bai & China Blue's achieving widespread popularity in Taiwan in the mid-1990s, guitar-oriented rock music was unusual in the country's domestic popular music scene. Live concerts were similarly rare but the group's frequent touring and live album releases set a new standard for live performing in Taiwan. The band's distinctive blend of poetical lyrics with rock tunes has won them fans not only in Taiwan but throughout East and Southeast Asia and they have had successful regional concert tours in the many cities.

In January 1996, Wu Bai & China Blue brought their powerful live show to Hong Kong for the first time to great success and Wu Bai began to be known as Taiwan's "King of Live Music." Later that year they released the smash hit album The End of Love, which, propelled by the hit single "Norwegian Forest," sold over 600,000 copies and was honored by the China Times and the United Evening News as one of the year's Top 10 albums. The album also ranked in the Top 20 Music Videos on television’s Channel and was nominated by MTV for the best music video of the year.

In June 1998, after representing Taiwan Beer in its new television commercial, Wu Bai also appeared in a Chinese movie A Beautiful New World, playing the part of a street singer. He also wrote and sang the title song for the movie.

In 1999, Wu Bai had a small role in The Personals, a motion picture with good box office sales. That November, Wu Bai released a Mandarin album, White Dove, and started a tour of three cities in Taiwan. He held six sold-out concerts in a gigantic tent called "Super Dome", which was also a ground breaking event for the Taiwanese concert scene. The album and the concerts were the first big events after Taiwan's devastating earthquake, which comforted so many people's broken hearts. As a result, Wu Bai was voted as the most popular singer of the year, and also rank number three as the Man of the Year, outranking Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui.

In the year 2000, Wu Bai wrote and sang the theme song for the Pili movie Legend of the Sacred Stone. This time his backing music had a full orchestra, and the lyrics were written in Classical Chinese. Between March and April, Wu Bai and China Blue held three concerts in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. In Singapore, the Strait Times' headline after the concert was "King of Chinese Rock", in Malaysia, the media headline was "Cult Master arrived, all congregation bowed." and in Hong Kong, the whole audience stood up in a stadium that has rules against standing during concerts. After these phenomenal successes, Wu Bai sang at Taiwan's new president's inauguration, Singapore's National Day concert, and Japan Fukuoka's Music Festival. In Fukuoka, Japanese audiences all stood up to enjoy the concert even though they likely did not understand the lyrics. Wu Bai has also appeared in Tsui Hark's movie Time and Tide as the lead actor, and also wrote two songs for the soundtrack. close