Mandopop’s King, Prince and Joker: Joker Xue to tickle more fans at One Love Asia Festival
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Chinese singer Joker Xue will perform a 40-minute set at The Padang on Oct 20, as part of One Love Asia Festival Singapore 2024.
PHOTO: IMC LIVE GLOBAL
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SINGAPORE – Fans who miss Joker Xue’s wisecracking ways and powerful vocals will not have to wait much longer.
The Chinese singer, one of the biggest breakout stars in recent years, is among the headliners of the two-day One Love Asia Festival Singapore 2024, happening on Oct 19 and 20.
He will perform a 40-minute set at the music festival held at The Padang on Oct 20. Other singers include Singapore’s Kit Chan, Taiwan’s Harlem Yu and China’s Yisa Yu.
Xue’s return to the Lion City comes nine months after his three sold-out concerts at the Singapore Indoor Stadium in January during his Extraterrestrial world tour.
Back then, he sang almost 30 numbers, including Actor (2015), Ugly (2013), What Do You Want Me To Do (2013) and Extraterrestrial (2020), while peppering his onstage banter with his signature off-the-wall humour. For example, he personally greeted many latecomers and made playful, good-natured comments about their outfits and hairstyles.
The 41-year-old said to one attendee in Singapore: “You are in your 60s and still listening to such ‘low-class’ popular music like mine? Thank you very much.”
Xue also proved to be an expert in Singlish, ending many sentences with the colloquial “lah” and dropping Hokkien phrases such as “wa lao eh” (“Wow”) and “ho seh boh” (“How are you?”).
After the Singapore stop, he took his tour to Chinese cities – such as Luoyang, Xiamen and Suzhou – and New York. At the 2024 Tencent Music Entertainment Awards held in Macau in July, his tour was crowned Best Concert of the Year and he won Best Male Singer in the Chinese Mainland.
After Xue’s tour concluded in August, he participated in a number of music festivals in China, and appeared on the Chinese reality programme Melody Journey, which matches singers and songwriters to potentially create original music together.
On the show, he mostly performed new works such as Hire Purchase. But on one episode, he donned a songwriter’s hat, and composed both melody and lyrics to a work titled Hobby, which was sung by Taiwan’s Chen Linong.
Xue has also released three new singles since his Singapore concerts. In February, there was the electronica track AI, while the spirited The Guardian dropped in July.
AI has been played more than 800,000 times on Spotify, while The Guardian has been played close to 300,000 times.
And in August, he put out the self-composed groovy pop number Relieve Boredom, a theme song for the multiplayer online kart racing game Speed Drifters. In its music video, he dons clown make-up, with his hair coloured bright blue, seemingly in line with his name and jokester image.
After Xue’s Extraterrestrial world tour concluded in August, he said on Weibo: “I thought my name (Xue Zhiqian) is ordinary – thank you for giving it brightness and magnetism. The only pride I can show off since I started my career is your selfless following... please live well, we will meet in person.”
BOOK IT/One Love Asia Festival Singapore 2024
Where: The Padang sistic.com.sg
When: Oct 19 and 20, doors open at 4pm
Admission: $188 (general admission one-day pass) and $228 (premium admission one-day pass) from Sistic (go to