Pop music and movie star Jay Chou from Taiwan struggled to produce a song for the Beijing Games because neither he nor long-time collaborator Vincent Fang had attempted writing this kind of music before.
The pair worked on the song A Long Journey for five months and finished a demo in Taipei on March 9. Chou told the Shanghai-based Oriental Daily he rushed to complete the song and ended up e-mailing it to Beijing Olympic officials at night just before the deadline.
BOCOG will reveal the songs for the Olympics and Paralympics 100 days before the respective Games start.
Chou, known for his roles in the Zhang Yimou-directed Curse of the Golden Flower and Initial D, said the song marked a new departure for him.
“I think the feeling of the electric guitars is a little stronger than just using the piano,” Chou said. “If listeners from Europe and America hear this kind of music, I hope it can make them jump back a little!”
The song blends Chou’s traditional Chinese sounds with other genres like rock and electro.
Some of Fang’s lyrics, written in Mandarin, have already been leaked on the Internet: “A long journey, countless nights, waiting for a clear moon, on the border of dreams, the wind blows ceaselessly, never feeling tired, the East is worthy, who is number one, let us pursue perfection.”
March 10 was the closing date for the fourth round of Olympic song solicitations. Organizers said they were looking for 25 songs for the Olympic Games, 10 songs for the Paralympics, one theme song each for the Olympic and Paralympic torch relays, theme songs for the volunteers and a piece of music for the award ceremonies.
Light the Passion, Share the Dream, composed by Hong Kong musician Chris Babida, has already been named for the Olympic torch relay, which got underway March 24. I am a Star, by Emil Chau, will be used for Olympic volunteers.

Giorgio Moroder and Kong Xiangdong’s Forever Friends is considered a leading candidate for the Olympic theme tune. This would be Moroder’s third Olympic theme song.
“National characteristics should be reflected in the song,” he said. “For example, Korean musical elements were used in Hand in Hand. This time, we have used Chinese music from Liu Yang River instead of Jasmine, because the latter has been overused.”

BOCOG started song hunting in 2003 and collected over 300 in 2005 alone, including Wishing Star by another Taiwan artist, Huang Dawei. Over 4,000 songs have been submitted over the last four years, including at least 30 for the theme song.
Canadian singer Celine Dion, who will perform on April 13 at Beijing Workers’ Stadium, has also sent a candidate theme song to BOCOG. The multiple Grammy Award winner sang The Power of the Dream at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Games. Four years ago in Athens, Icelandic artist Bjork took the honor, performing Oceania in a towering white and purple dress.
Former Olympic gold medalist Yang Ling penned the lyrics to one offering entitled I stand on the Olympic Winner’s Podium.
Beijing Satellite TV (BTV1) launched the program Olympic Songfest on Jan 5 last year so viewers could vote for their favorites.

from: chinadaily.com.cn

With Giorgio Moroder’s “Forever Friends” other 50,000 songs try to be selected

Over 50,000 songs have reached the organizers of the campaign to seek best songs for the Beijing Olympic Games in August this year, the Beijing Evening News reported.
The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) started soliciting the songs on April 15, 2003.
The responders include ordinary citizens, students, professional composers, overseas Chinese, people with disabilities, and many others.
Among the entries, many praise the rise of China, athletes’ striving for the title, triumph of bid victory etc. However, the Olympic songs have their audiences not only in China, but the world over. “We expect more entries which embody the common aspirations and ideals of mankind,” said Jiang Xiaoyu, executive vice-president of BOCOG.
“Only a song advocating the splendor of humanity as encouraged by the Olympic spirit, can surmount the cultural differences and become a good Olympic song,” he said.
The world audiences would like to sing songs that integrate the nationality and internationality, he added.
The melody of “Hand in Hand” composed by Giorgio Moroder (he also competes for the Beijing Olympic theme) for the Seoul Olympic Games did not mention any word like “Korean”, but it perfectly expressed the spirit of the people of the Republic of Korea promoting unity, development and progress, Jiang said.
With the Olympic Games less than 200 days away, BOCOG has started to promote part of the entries through television and mobile phone schemes.

Taiwan pop star Chang Hui-mei, once banned from performing in China, is hoping she will be chosen to sing at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, her past political problems forgiven and forgotten.
Chang has recorded a song in English called “Forever Friends” which, if chosen, she will perform in front of a global audience of billions on the night of Aug. 8, when the Olympics open.
It would mark an amazing comeback for a singer, affectionately known as A-Mei, who in 2000 sang the Taiwan anthem for anti-China President Chen Shui-bian’s inauguration.
China was incensed and stopped her from performing there until the summer of 2001. Though later allowed to return, in 2004 she cancelled a performance in Hangzhou after a protest by nearly 100 people accusing her of supporting Taiwan independence.
Chang, 35, declined to talk directly about those incidents in a recent interview with Reuters at a Beijing recording studio.
“I cannot say that my 10-year career path has been very smooth,” the petite singer said.
“But at least in the past 10 years, I have had highs and lows and I am glad to have walked safely through it all,” she added.
China views self-ruled, democratic Taiwan as part of its territory. The island has been ruled separately since defeated Nationalist forces fled there at the end of a civil war in 1949.
Beijing has threatened to take Taiwan, by force if necessary, but over the past few years has sought favour with Taiwanese people by promoting cultural exchanges.
Taiwanese and Hong Kong singers are hugely popular in China, despite its own growing pop scene, with many fans seeing those singers as more glamorous and fashionable.

“SMALL MISTAKE”
Chang, who grew up singing for fun in her native Puyuma village, stands out because of her strong voice on light rock tracks covering matters such as love and race.
Mandarin songs like “Can I hold you?”, “Bad Boy” and “When I started secretly to miss you” were big hits not just in Taiwan and China, but across Southeast Asia.
The singer’s top priority now is to rehearse and record “Forever Friends”, composed by Chinese musician Kong Xiangdong and Italian Giorgio Moroder, producer of the Seoul Olympic theme song “Hand in Hand”.
“A-Mei made a small mistake,” Kong said of Chang’s previous political problems. “But the audience did not forget her after all these years.”
The song has already won recognition with the Beijing Olympic organisers, who have praised it as one of their top five candidates, despite Chang’s checkered past in China.
“The Olympics and music are beyond borders and beyond politics,” said Wang Pingjiu, a senior official who is in charge of Olympic song selection.
“Personally, I like this song very much. But as for the future of the song — whether it is able to make it as the Olympic theme song — you might need to wait until the Aug 8. Olympic opening ceremony to find out the answer,” he added.
Previous Olympics have seen performances by Celine Dion, Bjork and Kylie Minogue. (Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Katie Nguyen)

from: guardian.co.uk 

The Dream Team of Giorgio Moroder witch include top star Coco Lee and Sun Nan, producer Kong Xiangdong and Yang Dongsheng and german lyricist Michael Kunze produced what should become the Beijing 2008 Olympic Theme.
Here the lyrics to the song:

Forever Friends

You’ve tasted bitter defeat and the sweet success.
You want it all and you settle for nothing less.
You’ve tried harder than the rest.
You’ve become one of the best.
This is the time you’ll remember for
All your life.

Forever friends
In harmony
As the whole world joins and sees
Days of unity and peace.
Forever through the years
We’ll hear the cheers.
Joy and laughter everywhere!
We’re together here to share
Forever friends

You’ll meet all races, see faces you’ve never seen.
People from parts of the world where you’ve never been.
And you’ll feel it in your heart
We spent too much time apart
This is the time when all dreams of man come alive.
No matter where we are or go
No matter what we hope for or know
No matter how we word our prayer
There is one dream we share
One world One Dream
Forever friends
In Harmony!
Forever Friends
One dream we dream,
One world we share.

RobLadin.com

Celine Dion, the Canadian songstress famed for the Titanic theme tune, “My Heart Will Go On”, will perform a song for the Beijing Olympics in a concert in April and submit an entry for the Games’s theme song, organizers said.
Dion’s concert will be held on April 13 at the Beijing Workers Stadium as part of her worldwide tour to promote her latest album, “Taking Chances“, according to the Beijing Olympic organizers.
The Grammy Award winner said via video at a news briefing in Beijing on yesterday that she would prepare well for the song and believed it would reflect the “One World, One Dream” concept of the event.
Her team had prepared the song as an entry for the Olympic theme song, but had not yet submitted it to the solicitation committee, a source with the Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee told Xinhua today.
Her April show has been included in a number of celebrations for the Games, which run from Aug. 8 to 24.
Dion sang “The Power of the Dream” at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
Dozens of domestic and foreign singers had submitted bids for the Beijing Olympics theme. Entries close in March.
“Forever Friends“, composed by Giorgio Moroder, Kong Xiangdong and Michael Kunze, has also been submitted.

from: eastday.com

BEIJING, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) — “Forever Friends,” a song written by famed musicians Giorgio Moroder, Kong Xiangdong and Michael Kunze, is bidding to become the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games theme, sources said. An English version of the song’s music video finished shooting last month in Beijing and was expected to be on television and the Internet by the beginning of next year.

“The song meets the requirements of the Beijing Olympic Games,” said Zhao Dongming, the culture department director of the Beijing Organizing Committee of Olympic Games (BOCOG). “It is heartwarming and has broad appeal.”
“We hope to impress people the world over who come to the Olympic Games with this beautiful song at the opening ceremony.”
The lyrics go “You’ve tasted bitter defeat and the sweet success/ You want it all and you settle for nothing less/ You’ve tried harder than the rest/ You’ve become one of the best/ This is the time you’ll remember for all your life”.
However, BOCOG officials said it was still too early to say if the tune had become the Olympic theme song as the solicitation campaign ends in March.
Moroder wrote the official theme songs “Reach out” for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and “Hand in Hand” for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. The Italian, who produced Donna Summer’s disco classic “Love to Love You Baby” and many other pop hits, said he wanted to show “determination to act hand-in-hand and heart-to-heart” in “Forever Friends”.
The father of Euro disco said he had used some rhythms of the folk song “Liuyanghe” and traditional Chinese musical instruments in “Forever Friends” to bring Chinese features into it.
Kong, the famed Chinese pianist, said listeners would feel harmony, enthusiasm, devotion and joy in the song and he hoped it would become the Games theme.
The lyrics were written by Germany’s Kunze, while popular singers Coco Lee and Sun Nan performed the song in the music video.

The worldwide solicitation for a Games theme song will conclude on March 10. A prize of 20,000 yuan (about 2,700 U.S. dollars) is being offered to each of the 25 winners selected by a panel of professional musicians.
The theme will be unveiled 100 days before the Games opening ceremony, the BOCOG said.
The Beijing Olympics take place from August 8 to 24.

from: xinhuanet.com 

To Beijing, to the Olympics 2008. An event that brings all people together to become friends in the true spirit of the olympic games.
When “Friends” and “Olympic Spirit” turn to music then it’s called “Forever Friends“.
The Dream Team of Giorgio Moroder witch include top star Coco Lee and Sun Nan, producer Kong Xiangdong and Yang Dongsheng and german lyricist Michael Kunze produced what should become the Beijing 2008 Olympic Theme. The music video is scheduled for release before the year is over. In addition, a Chinese version of the song is in the works now and will be ready for release early next year.

At work for the Music Video release

Sun Nan, Coco Lee film “Forever Friends” music video

BEIJING, Nov. 30 — Coco Lee and Sun Nan were in Beijing Thursday to film the final scenes for the music video of the Beijing Olympic song “Forever Friends.”

“This is a multinational family arts group. we come from different cultural backgrounds and have become a close-knit family because of the Olympics. We are a true reflection of “Forever Friends,” said producer Kong Xiangdong.

Two-time Grammy Award-winning composer Giorgio Moroder headed the song’s music composition. Moroder has experience in producing Olympic hits — he composed the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic theme song “Reach Out” and the Seoul 1988 Olympic theme song “Hand in Hand.”

German lyricist Michael Kunze, whose achievements include successfully translating the hit musicals “Cats” and “Phantom of the Opera” into German, penned the English lyrics to “Forever Friends.”

The three members of the creative team for the song represent a multi-ethnic, boundary-free world. They truly represent the theme of “Forever Friends.”

Following the debut performance of “Forever Friends” during the one-year countdown celebration for the Beijing Olympic Games last August, Moroder and Kong decided to do a new recording of the song.

That’s when singers Sun Nan and Coco Lee got involved. In addition, CCTV host, Yang Dongsheng, was invited to join the production team. Coco Lee and Sun Nan are both honored to perform “Forever Friends” and hope to pass the song’s message along to the rest of the world.

The “Forever Friends” music video is scheduled for release before the year is over. In addition, a Chinese version of the song is in the works now and will be ready for release early next year.

Moroder (1st, R) is full of praise for the two singers (Source: BOCOG)

Moroder and Kong Xiangdong reminisce about the past (Source: BOCOG)

Coco Lee and Sun Nan film a scene on the Great Wall (Source: BOCOG)

from: xinhuanet.com