星晴

"星晴" is the lightest thing on Jay Chou's debut, and it functions as the album's exhale. Built on a gently strummed acoustic guitar with a swaying, almost lullaby-tempo rhythm section, it's the least R&B-inflected track he'd recorded — closer to Taiwanese campus-folk lineage than to the American production he was otherwise importing. Chou's vocal is soft and unhurried, still slurred but affectionate rather than moody, and the melody moves in easy stepwise phrases designed to be hummed by someone who can't sing. The lyric, which Chou wrote himself, is a small fantasy of escape with a lover: riding a bicycle, taking her hand, wanting to fly to a place where the stars belong to the two of them. The title's pun — 星 (star) inside 晴 (clear weather) — signals the whole mood, the sky as a private room. There's nothing complicated in it, no wound, no cleverness for its own sake, which is why it survived: it's the Jay Chou song people put on when they're happy rather than when they're hurting. It suits an evening bike ride, a rooftop, a long walk home with someone you like, sung under your breath so they can just barely hear.