April 08, 2005

The incredible Wing Wing is a Hong Kong native who immigrated to NZ ten years ago. She sings the greats for retirement homes and hospital patients. Now she's been discovered by the creators of South Park. You may have heard of Wing before, but if not then I highly recommend downloading at least one of her tracks to hear her unforgettable voice.
posted by tracicle 19 years ago
  • Damn you, Wolof! In my defense, she has a new album now. And hey, South Park.
  • Also been over a year. Seems like there should be a point past which an old post can come back to bloom again.
  • Ah the irony... we've all done it.
  • I love Wing. I love South Park. I hate that I missed this. That's shitty that she's charging now. They used to be free. If you like bad singing, try this. On preview: This is different, she wasn't on South Park then. (It is funny that you posted in that thread though).
  • Damn you, Mr Knickerbocker. How did you manage to record me in my shower?
  • That's my hobby, maryh.
  • Stop making fun of my mom.
  • Do you think she knows that people only listen to her because she is awful? I wonder if there are people protecting her from that information and she believes that she is actually good. I missed the first post, so thank you tracicle.
  • If Wing sang traditional Chinese opera pieces with that voice, she'd be considered fairly competent. Therein lies the problem, methinks. Chinese opera singing (links to Amazon site, try the samples halfway down the page) is very, very different from other forms of singing. However, it's very hard for me to make any other general statements about Chinese opera, as it is as complicated and tied to regional traditions as Western music is.
  • Completely faked me out -- I honestly thought that I was going to some sort of opera-style rendering of classic tunes. I liked this better, though.
  • Thanks for the flashback! My wife and I were married in Indonesia two years ago. A lady who was a carbon-copy of Wing sung [too much IMO!] at the end of our reception. The crowd of 400+ people seemed to genuinely love her singing, while my wife pleaded desperately to her mother to "force her to stop!" My father swears to this day that she was "yodeling" in Chinese I should make some mp3s from the wedding video and jumpstart her career
  • Saw the South Park episode and loved Wing. At first when I heard her I laughed at how horrible she sang but there's something about the sincerity of Wing that just wins you over and the noise turns into music. It's weird.
  • Oh nooooooooooo- not Wing again!?! there's something about the sincerity of Wing that just wins you over and the noise turns into music. It's weird. posted by hikikomori please, no. It doesn't ever become music for me. However, she does come off as disarmingly modest and sincere so you can't hate her or anything
  • I was also shocked to learn that she got an arts grant from NZ! NZ is tops on my list of places to emigrate to but I gotta wonder about the Kiwi wisdom in that decision. I wonder if Mike Nock (brilliant NZ musician) also got any grants.
  • NZ rocks! They produced Lucy Lawless (Xena) so they're tops with me too.
  • If Wing sang traditional Chinese opera pieces with that voice, she'd be considered fairly competent. That was the question that entered my mind...after I stopped laughing. My knowledge of Chinese opera is pretty much limited to knowing it isn't sung like Western Opera, but I do remember the vocal techniques favored to be at least somewhat like hers. I always find it interesting to see/hear what constitutes 'music' to other cultures. I remember a story, possibly apocryphal, of a Japanese group being exposed to a Western chamber orchestra or something similar for the first time a century or two ago; and it being dismissed by the Japanese as so much noise.
  • I don't think Mike Nock has lived in NZ for about a gazillion years.
  • It's surprisingly easy to get grants for NZ musicians from the government. We have a government-funded program called "NZ On Air" that pretty much gives cash out to any creative outlets to get them in the public eye. I don't know what form her grant/s took, though. Don't even know who Mike Nock is.
  • Alnedra, I wonder now how popular she is in the NZ Chinese community, which is quite large.
  • Mike Nock
  • First sighting of MiNo on MoFi here. Sorry!
  • I'm not quite sure how happy Mike Nock would be to know that he's sharing a thread with Wing.
  • manock@ozemail.com.au can answer that question.