Jay Chou dropped his first new music in three years last night at 11pm China time, and the Chinese internet promptly flipped out. The new track, a piano-propelled song called “Won’t Cry” which features fellow Mandopop megastar Ashin from Mayday, shifted 2 million copies in its first hour — and the numbers have only gotten more mind-boggling since then.
The Taiwanese duo’s track was even blamed for a temporary outage on one of China’s biggest streaming platforms, QQ Music.
In case you want the song stuck in your head all day, here’s the music video (featuring a cutesy Tokyo-set story):
Those 2 million copies sold across streaming platforms QQ Music, Kugou, and Kuwo in the first hour of being online earned the song 11 million RMB (1.5 million USD). Just 40 minutes later, “Won’t Cry” was doing such good numbers that it was already in the top 8 tracks for the year.
It’s further proof that there’s still plenty of pop life left in the 40 year-old Chou, despite numerous “little fresh meat” pretenders to his Mandopop throne. In late July, his fans won an epic online beef against supporters of young gun Cai Xukun, and once again today social media is being absolutely swamped by mentions of Jay — despite him not even having an official personal account on key platforms such as Weibo.
That beef is even sneakily referenced via one of a series of easter eggs in the music video for “Won’t Cry.” In one scene, the video’s female lead is shown holding a milk tea sign with a “Number One Topic” sticker on one corner, a nod to the online battle with Cai.
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Jay Chou was one of a number of Taiwanese stars to dominate the charts in mainland China throughout the ’00s and his hits — many of them, like “Won’t Cry” composed together with Vincent Fang — still have a special place in the hearts of China’s millennial pop fans.
Get some more Mid-Autumn music right here:
