Five Vietnamese Albums To Know Me
Tagged by @peachyseen. Thank you for the tag. I've always known my musical listening taste was spread across different genres but this was really hard to pick so I cheated and ended up limiting myself to one language so i could do free pr for vietnamese pop 💝
Anh Trai Vượt Ngàn Chông Gai (Call Me By Fire Vietnam) - Season 1
life changing, generational music reality competition. this show has left phenomenal social and cultural impacts that academics will still be researching about years from now on. as for me, it fulfils my eternal love for the art of remaking/revitalizing 'old' pop songs.
i am in fact still obsessed with ATVNCG and im sooooooo excited for the new season
ả - marzuz
to me, marzuz is THAT indie pop princess whose compositions is distinctive, edgy, and experimental with sophisticated production.
VIETNAMESE CONCERT THE ALBUM - Hoàng Thùy Linh
As the rearranged concert album combining all tracks from both of her two most popular folktronica albums - Hoàng and LINK, the Vietnamese Concert album is perhaps Hoàng Thùy Linh's magnum opus. Hoàng in particular was a special album, one that is near and dear to my heart as my obsession with it served as major catalyst in pulling me back to listening to vietnamese pop after my high school years of exclusively listening to broadway showtunes and us/uk pop rock.
3 (tuyển tập nhạc Ngọt mới trẻ sôi động 2019) - Ngọt
I felt like this list would be incompletely if I didn't include an album from a viet band since viet indie pop rock pretty much dominated by musical taste during my years in university. I debated long and hard between Ngọt, Cá Hồi Hoang, and Chillies and of course Ngọt's 3 won in the end because the release of this album was the last time I got to see Ngọt band live before my favorite member left the band 😭
5:0 Playlist - ICD (a series of track diss against his rival Rich Choi)
ICD is imho the best lyrical rapper in Vietnam of all time and he'll probably forever remain underrated but that's alright with me. I had a hard time choosing a representative Vietnamese hiphop album because I have a tendency to only like certain tracks from a rap album and I've already recommended ICD's sophomore album in this post so I want to recommend this EP-like series of diss tracks ICD put out, in response to his frenemy/rapper colleague and fellow competitor in Show Me The Money Vietnam (King Of Rap) and the allegations he was favored by the show's producer and won because of favoritism.
Diss track/record is probably a niche hiphop genre that's not very popular in this day and age (because of its confrontational nature) but ICD is truly a genius at his craft and I just love the way he structured and mapped out his diss tracks to be cohesive and thematic. His rhyme schemes leave me speechless every time. My favorite diss track among this series is "Không muốn dây" (timestamp: 10:50).
