Fans of musicians may find ROCK N’ ROAD very interesting. From the title alone, it’s obvious that it’s a drama about the music industry. And I love dramas that give an insight on the entertainment world.

I also couldn’t help thinking Jung Yonghwa would be perfect for the role of Zhou Shu Yu played by Chris Wu. Shu Yu started out as the guitarist of an aspiring band and later becomes a famous music producer and composer. He’s passionate about his music so the role really reminds me of JYH.

 

 

But that aside, the first two episodes of the drama tackles the process of making music and turning a singer into a star. It also touches on launching a single in the market, doing a publicity spree, interviews, anti-fans and plagiarism. For someone who is a fangirl and who works in the media, these are very interesting sub-plots for me, and very familiar too.

Zhou Shu Yu may be a combination of many real-life personalities in the Taiwanese music industry including Jay Chou (who gets mentioned in episode 2 together with Wilber Pan), Wang Lee Hom and Ashin, just some of the names I could think of. He has turned Yang Jia Xin into a big star by producing and composing songs for her (Jay Chou and Jolin Tsai references maybe?). But the lead female character is Lin Wei Zhen (Kimi Hsia) who is a washed-out child star still trying to make it big in the industry. It doesn’t entail wild guesses that Shu Yu will have a hand in making Wei Zhen’s dream come true.

“To be creative is having a dream.

What we are doing now is stealing someone else’s dream.

Music shouldn’t hurt people.”

– Zhou Shu Yu

Since this is a Taiwanese drama, you can be sure of two things:

they’re over-ambitious with settings and locations but they have very little production budget — for example, they love crowd scenes but it’s very obvious with tight camera shots that they can’t even hire a hundred people to fill up a hotel room for a press conference scene.

the female lead is always quirky — okay, maybe there are a few exceptions but Wei Zhen is like a prototype of some Taiwanese dramas I have seen. She exaggerates her way of talking and acting like she’s a six-year old in a body of a 20+-year-old woman. It’s awkward to watch especially when you’ve seen it countless of times.

But still, ROCK N’ ROAD is interesting. And I am beginning to understand the hoohah on Chris Wu (first saw him in NEXT STOP: HAPPINESS with Van Ness Wu).

 

 

Since this is a musical drama, of course the soundtrack needs to be at the very least good, right? Well, it’s got Mayday singing the opening theme, Ni De Wei Yi, and Jia Jia’s Kuai Le Kuai Le as the ending theme. I love Jia Jia’s voice.

 

 

“Respect your performance and your audience will respect you.”

I can’t remember the last time I liked a Taiwanese drama. The last one was last year’s AMOUR ET PATISSERIE, which really had a lot of potential but it took ages for episodes to be uploaded (the drama is already done but the subbing has not been completed till now) that I eventually lost interest. I hope ROCK N’ ROAD will be able to sustain my interest. I am also looking forward to the Joe Cheng-Janine Chang starrer YOU LIGHT UP MY STAR that will start airing on June 1.

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