Elva Hsiao

Elva Hsiao
Taipei autograph session《Diamond Candy》
Birth name	Hsiao Ya-Hsuan (蕭亞軒)
Born	(1979-08-24) August 24, 1979 Jungli City, Taoyuan County, Republic of China
Occupation	Singer
Genre(s)	Mandopop
Label(s)	Sony Music Entertainment

Elva Hsiao (Chinese: 蕭亞軒, Japanese: エルバ・シャオ, Hangul: 소아헌, born August 24, 1979). She is a Taiwanese Mandopop singer.

Biography

She was educated at John Casablanca's College in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is fluent in both written and spoken English. While in Vancouver, she attended the New Talent Singing Awards Vancouver Audition in 1998 with her birth name of Hsiao Ya-Chih (蕭雅之). She became one of the 12 finalists but did not place in the top 5. She sang CoCo Lee's "Love Me A Little Longer (Chinese: 愛我久一點)". In that competition there were 3 other Taiwanese recent singers, 183 Club member Jacky Chu (祝釩剛), who was the winner, DJ Ruby Lu (盧春如), 1st Runner-Up and Michelle*Vickie (蜜雪薇琪) member Michelle Hsu (now known as Mimi or Michelle). In 2010, she admitted to receiving double eyelid surgery at a media event, after years of speculation from netizens.^[1]

Music career

Elva was originally signed to Virgin Records Taiwan, a sub-label of EMI, which created the Chinese stage name (蕭亞軒) for her. Her self-titled début album in 1999 sold over 1 million copies in Asia and cemented her status in the Chinese music industry.^[2]

In 2001, Elva won the award for Best Selling Chinese Artist at the 2001 World Music Awards held in Monaco on 2 May.^[3]

Elva Hsiao sang the song "U Make Me Wanna", which appeared on her album Love's Theme Song, Kiss (2002), with British boy band Blue. Virgin Records and Elva parted ways in summer of 2004.

For a year, Elva rested as record companies fought over her next contract. It ended up becoming a battle between Warner Music Taiwan and Sony BMG, with Warner Music winning the battle in the end. Elva signed into Warner Music on 23 March 2005, making her Warner Taiwan's "fifth diva" (after Sammi Cheng, A-Mei Chang, Na Ying, and Stefanie Sun).^[4] Fans were overjoyed at this, and waited for the coming of a new album, which Warner had promised would be released in June 2005.

However, Warner Music Taiwan was facing internal issues during this period, including executives resigning and a change of staff members. Many other Warner artists (including Stefanie Sun, Machi, A-Mei, and F.I.R.) were affected and did not see much promotion on their albums. However, none faced as much trouble as Elva, whose album was delayed from September till December and eventually Warner announced that the album would be delayed indefinitely. This angered the fans, who had been waiting patiently. Their protests spammed the forums of Warner Music Taiwan, causing the entire website to be out of service for a week.

In February 2006, a Warner representative promised in an interview that the album would be released around late March/early April. It was only a few weeks later that magazine articles reported another change of staff members and the possibilities of the album being delayed into late April/early May. In June 2006, she released a new single, entitled "The World I Want" [我要的世界].

In October 2006, the delayed album still had not been released, although Elva announced that it would be released in December. At that time she was in Los Angeles working on dance choreography. In addition, she released another new promotion single entitled "Elva Is Back", a fast catchy song featuring electro beats and raps. A dance song “Confession”(表白) made the top 10. Elva and Warner Music announced in November that her newest album would be released on 22 December. The album is called 1087, signifying the number of days Elva had been absent from the Mandopop scene.

She released the music video for her single called "Confession" in mid-2007. Her next singles were "L.o.V.E", "Not Far Away", "The Ambassador", "Honey Honey Honey", and "My Boyfriend".

Back to EMI

After the contract with Warner Music, Elva decided to switch back to EMI Virgin Records in 2008. She described the switch as "going back home" as she was among the first few artists signed by Virgin Music Chinese in 1999 when the division was first established.^[5] Some critics also commented Elva was avoiding the back of Warner's original General Manager Sam Chen who has a bad name in Chinese music industry in controlling and creating fake statistics for his artists. The rumoured contract cost EMI over NT$250 million which is over HKD 60 million or about USD 8 million. Johanna Wang, President of EMI Music Taiwan commented that the action of signing Elva was proving they (EMI) are not going to quit the Chinese music scene. Instead, they would create a new entertainment empire spanning over film productions, artist management, concert production, publishing and both digital and traditional music industries.

Elva's first album back with EMI,三面夏娃, was originally set to be released in late May 2008. But due to the delay in production and of China's approval due to the Olympic Games^{[citation needed]}, the album was pushed back and released on 13 June 2008.^[6]

Elva switched her record company to Gold Typhoon after Gold Label Record's acquisition of EMI Music Taiwan in August 2008.

Film and other media work

In Taiwan, she has done television commercials for a wide diversity of products, ranging from mobile phones to jewellery to makeup, for major brands such as Avon, De Beers, Motorola, Pantene, and Sprite. She has had film roles in two movies: Infernal Affairs (2002) and The Butterfly Lovers (2004). She is no longer participating in Fresh Tomato for Sauce (Announced 2007). However, she is currently in talks to play a role in the TV series Less Than Zero, a retake on Bret Easton Ellis' famous novel that will be set in Taipei. She will play the role of Julie Chang, a UCLA business major interning in Taipei with Smith Barney.

By joining EMI Virgin Records, the EMI's Gold Label Records which is seen as an inter-industrial agency is starting to find scripts and tailor-made roles for Elva as she plans to have more participation in movies under EMI, as part of changes to the strategic plans of EMI in the Asia-Pacific market. She will have a role in an upcoming TV series called 大江大海一九四九, which seeks to chronicle the material covered in Lung Ying-tai's novel of the same name (which chronicles the Chinese Civil War).

The first cross-media work is the co-partnership with Puma which Elva would become the spokesperson of Puma and Puma would buy media place including TVCs, print ads, billboards for the label and Elva's album. Puma would also sponsor Elva's music video "I'll Be There".

Discography

Studio

English album

Compilations

Awards and nominations

References

External links

• LoveElva.com – Official site
• Elva Hsiao at the Internet Movie Database