i already shared something on kavita's great #worldwide music wednesday thread, but then i realized i want to share some other music with that criteria i've been listening to a lot lately. and who's going to stop me? nobody, that's right.
anyway, i'm not vietnamese but a few of my housemates are from vietnam and that's how i first heard of ya girl Hoàng Thùy Linh. "See Tình" is the first song of hers i heard, and i think it might be her most popular internationally since when i looked it up on spotify, it was part of a big spotify-brand playlist. it also had a moment on tik tok.
i only heard this song as first and thought it was catchy, but seeing the music video is what inspired me to go down the wormhole. the combination of the lisa frank color palette, the mix of animation with live action and cool practical sets, and the mix of traditional vietnamese and present-day western style costumes/clothing makes for a memorable and super pretty aesthetic.
Hoàng Thùy Linh started her career as a girl group member and actress when she was in her teens in the mid-00s, and her stuff looks pretty similar to K-pop of the same era. her career was sadly derailed by a sex tape scandal in 2007 that let to her teen-oriented TV show getting canceled. she adopted her current aesthetic and music style for her 2019 album "Hoàng," her first album since 2011 and her first of her 30s. that era continued with her next album, August 2022's "Link," which the above song is from.
in my own, less interesting life, i don't have such a high-intensity job that i can't listen to music, but i often can't concentrate well enough if i'm listening to music with lyrics i can understand. that and the half-bop, half-calming energy of Hoàng Thùy Linh's most recent two albums (and the fact that they're just good pop music) (with some bad rap features in there that i always skip) means that i've listened to them a lot recently.
maybe this is a little tldr for a post about an artist i don't actually know that much about, but in conclusion here are two of my favorite songs from her 2019 album. the choral part towards the end of "Duyên Âm" always gets me.