Bad Boy (A-Mei album)

Bad Boy is the second studio album by Taiwanese singer A-Mei. It was released on June 7, 1997, by Forward Music. Predominantly a R&B, pop and soul record, Bad Boy centers on the theme of love and relationships. The album was produced by her mentor Chang Yu-sheng with the aid of Benjamin Lin, Ma Yu-fen and Yu Guangyan. It was ultimately the last album of hers that Chang was actively involved with due to his untimely death caused by a car crash five months later. On August 17, 2018, 21 years after its initial release date, a vinyl reissue of Bad Boy was released by Forward Music.

Commercially, the album found immense success at home and abroad, topping Taiwan's IFPI sales chart for 9 weeks and went on to sell a total of 1.38 million copies in Taiwan alone. Since its release, Bad Boy has remained the highest-selling album of all time in Taiwan. It also managed to shift more than 6 million copies throughout Asia, setting a major record for the highest sales for a Taiwanese singer.

In order to promote Bad Boy, five songs off it were released as singles; the title track, "Can't Cry," "Whenever I Think About You," "Dancing Alone" and "Listen to the Sea." All five singles attained commercial success throughout Asia and are now regarded as modern day classics in the Mandopop genre. To this very day they are still sung at karaoke boxes and are often performed by contestants on major televised singing competitions. A-Mei performed songs from the album on her concert tour A-Mei In Concert Live In Concert 1998 the following year.

Background and production
Seven months prior, A-Mei released her debut studio album, Sisters. The record became an immediate success, selling over 1.21 million copies in Taiwan, becoming the fourth best-selling album of all time in the country, and shipping an additional 4 million copies throughout Asia. Therefore, breaking a glass ceiling for Taiwanese aborigines in show business. This meteoric rise to fame lead Billboard Magazine to declare her Asia's most popular singer on May 17, 1997.

Afterwards, Chang Yu-sheng produced the album Bad Boy for A-Mei. In terms of production, Chang chose to continue the "happy songs + love songs" model from the preceding album Sisters. At the time of the album's production, Forward Music was just starting out, and producer Chang's request to A-Mei was to incorporate the singing style of the Beinan countryside into the songs, and sing them "a bit rockier, a bit more violent"; he hoped to inspire A-Mei's unique qualities, believing that such qualities were not possessed or were too shy to be displayed by urban women, the largest audience for pop music. In addition, Chang also added some fashionable elements to the album.

Writing and recording
The album opener "Can't Cry" was written by Liu Si Ming and composed by Liu Zhihong. As the first song of the album, the power ballad fully demonstrates A-Mei's prowess in singing lyrical slow songs. The title track, "Whenever I Think About You" and "Lonely Tequila" were composed and written entirely by Chang Yu-sheng. "Whenever I Think About You" in particular serves as a continuation of the song "Sisters." "Dancing Alone" was written by Yu Guangyan and composed by Sky Wu.

"Listen to the Sea" was written by Eric Lin and was composed by Michael Tu. On the day of writing the lyrics of "Listen to the Sea," Eric Lin went to a small bar with a book and didn't come out until four in the morning, then followed the bartender and drove to have a late-night snack, and at that time the dawn was breaking in the sky, and one of the waiters suddenly said that she would like to go to the seaside to have a look, and everybody felt that the proposal was good, so the group went there. When they went there, they sat on the beach and chatted, and Lin asked the girls about their relationship status and their views on relationships. All their answers were different, which gave Lin a certain understanding of women's views on relationships in that era, and laid the groundwork for the creation of "Listen to the Sea."

Cheng Hua Jiuan wrote and composed the song "Sweet Words." The torch song "Lover? Enemy?" was written by Wu Yukang and composed by Guo Tzu. "Loving Isn't Too Early or Too Late" is a synthesizer-laden ballad written by Daryl Yao and composed by Zheng Zhiming. The pop, R&B and gospel influenced album closer "Loved You" was penned by Lo-Jung Chen and composed by Chen Chih-yuan.

Reception
Buoyed by the success of several hit singles, Bad Boy debuted at number one on the Taiwan IFPI albums chart and remained at that position on the chart for nine weeks, becoming her second consecutive record to accomplish this. Bad Boy sold 1.38 million copies in Taiwan, making it the record holder for Taiwan's highest-selling album to date, a record which was previously held by Jacky Cheung's The Goodbye Kiss (1993). The album sold 6 million copies throughout Asia. The success of Bad Boy led A-Mei to receive various music awards in Asia, which attracted the high attention of the international music scene and established her status as one of the most sought-after celebrities in East Asia.

The album's title track made it onto the leaderboard of the 4th China Music Awards' Chinese Top 20 Chart Songs, which was held by Channel V. At the same ceremony she also won the prize for Best Newcomer. At the 9th Golden Melody Awards held in 1998, Michael Tu was nominated for Best Composer for his work on the song "Listen to the Sea." At the same ceremony A-Mei herself was nominated for Best Mandarin Female Singer while the album Bad Boy was nominated for Album of the Year.