Jacky Cheung’s 2016 World Tour Concert – Countdown post #1

It’s almost that time again!!!  My idol Jacky Cheung had announced earlier in the year that he will for sure be starting a concert tour this year (2016), however the details have yet to be announced.  A few months ago, an entertainment magazine claimed that Jacky’s concert was originally set to start in October 2016, however due to legal disputes with Jacky’s former concert manager Florence Chan, Jacky and his current concert organizer Universal will be delaying the concert indefinitely.  Universal responded by denying the report and confirming that Jacky’s concert will launch in October 2016 in Mainland China as originally planned.  They did not reveal any other information in their statement though and said that further details will be forthcoming at a later date.  Jacky did confirm in a subsequent interview (during promo efforts for his new movie) that his concert will indeed launch in October and the previous reports of the concert being delayed are false, however he also declined to reveal too much detail and asked that everyone wait for Universal’s official announcement (reporters did ask him about the HK leg of the concert, to which he replied that the ‘earliest’ he would be able to do HK is December due to availability of the HK Coliseum, which is notoriously difficult to book).

 

As of right now, neither Universal nor Jacky have made any official announcements concerning his concert.  With the rise in fraudulent news and scams in the entertainment circle the past few years, especially with the prevalence of social media and ordinary netizens becoming easy targets, I would like to take this opportunity to warn all Jacky fans (and non-fans alike) to be wary of any information you hear / see / read on the Internet pertaining to Jacky’s concert.  Unless the information comes from Universal, Jacky himself, or his official fan club, otherwise, please take whatever you hear with a grain of salt!

 

A few days ago, there was a supposedly ‘leaked’ document from the Mainland company collaborating with Universal for the China leg of Jacky’s concert claiming that the necessary approvals have been received from the Mainland government agencies for the concert to be held in Beijing.  The document claimed to be for the Beijing leg of the tour and listed concert dates, venue, performer, as well as 60 songs that would supposedly be performed (the dates are listed as 10/21 to 10/23 at the LeSports Center in Beijing).  While I’m pretty sure the venue and dates are likely correct, the song list for sure is NOT, for the following reasons: 

 

1) Jacky traditionally sings around 30 to 35 songs at his concerts, which is enough to fill a 2 to 3 hour timeslot – even the shows that go overtime with multiple encore segments have only been around 40 songs max, so for someone to claim that he will song 60 songs in a 3 hour timeframe is ludicrous.

 

2) A few songs from Jacky’s newest album Wake Up Dreaming were not on the list, which is already a huge red flag, since Jacky himself had already said that he will for sure be performing all 10 songs from his new album at his next concert (which is in-line with how Jacky has done it in the past whenever he holds a concert after an album release)

 

3)  Some of the song names in the ‘60-song list’ were actually spelled wrong (there were extra Chinese characters in some of the songs that didn’t belong there while some songs had characters missing, which essentially turns the song into a completely different song altogether).  Obviously this is another huge red flag, as we all know that the official organizers and Jacky himself would never spell the song names wrong – this is not only unprofessional but also hugely erodes credibility.

 

I checked with a few friends in Beijing who are familiar with how the process works there and they told me that the document released was merely a form that the company arranging the concert had to fill out and submit to the Mainland government entities to get permission to use the listed venue.  It is purely a ‘best guesstimate’ procedural document used to secure the facility and by no means should it be treated as any type of ‘official’ announcement regarding the concert.  My friends said that the song choices were most likely the personal preferences of whoever put the form together and therefore should not be treated as ‘the official rundown’ for the concert (one of my friends also told me that the ‘content’ field on the form can’t be left blank otherwise the application will get rejected, which is probably why the person wrote down a list of 60 songs in the hopes that maybe half of them will be on the mark when the official announcement comes out).

 

As I’ve done in past years, I will definitely be posting up concert information in the sidebar section of my blog, however I will only do so once the ‘official’ announcements come out and I am able to validate the information as being correct and accurate.  In the meantime, I encourage those who are highly anticipating Jacky’s concert to be vigilant and carefully filter through any information you receive concerning his upcoming concert tour.