This has been an exciting year for Asian American music fans. Taking off above a bubbling community of AAPI singer-songwriters and individual performers, we’ve seen Bruno Mars, who’s of Filipino and Puerto Rican descent (and born and raised in Hawai’i) hit the top of the charts with “Just the Way You Are,” and Far East Movement, the first-ever all Asian American group (Korean, Chinese, Filipino and Japanese), bust out of Los Angeles’ Koreatown and also top the charts with its catchy electro-hip hop dance single “Like a G6.”
The song was certified Double-Platinum this week by the Recording Industry Association of America, which means it’s sold and impressive two million copies. That’s a pretty cool accomplishment for a group of pals from K-town. Their big break was being included on the soundtrack of director Justin Lin’s “Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift,” and their music’s shown up on various TV shows. Earlier this week I even caught “Like a G6” blasting in the background during a nightclub scene of “CSI: Miami.”
The group’s third album, “Free Wired,” is still on its upward curve, and the second single, the ballad “Rocketeer,” is going strong, featuring Denver native Ryan Tedder as a guest vocalist.
For Colorado fans who may have miss FM when they played in Denver, the group will be playing at CU-Boulder in the spring.
(Cross-posted from my gilasakawa.posterous.com pop culture blog)
I grew up – like all baby boomers – during an era of radio when the Top 40 format was perfected during the first two decade of rock and roll, and genres didn’t divide up into separate formats. An entire generation of pop music fans pretty much grew up listening to a wild mix of rock, soul, country – white and black – with a lot of novelty songs thrown in for good measure.
