The 35th Golden Melody Awards ceremony will be held at Taipei Arena on June 29, and the list of nominees was announced yesterday. The competition for Best Mandarin Female Singer is intense this year, with the highly anticipated A-Lin surprisingly missing the cut.
Many were hoping that the late artist Jonathan Lee would receive a Special Contribution Award, but due to not holding Republic of China citizenship, he was ineligible for the honor.
A-Lin, with a 25-year career and six previous nominations for Best Female Singer, is widely respected in the industry. Her latest album “Sika Deer” was released last year to high expectations from fans, but it failed to impress the judging panel. Chairman of this year’s judging panel, Chen Zihong, provided clarification on this matter.
Chen Zihong, serving as the panel chairman for the second time, revealed during the press conference that there were 24,071 entries this year. The selection process was intense, with a marathon 12-hour meeting held the day before. Chen mentioned that every award category was difficult to decide, especially the Best Mandarin Female Singer award, which took five rounds of deliberation without a winner in the first round.
When asked about the notable omissions from this year’s nominations, Chen Zihong candidly mentioned Eason Chan, A-Lin, Yisa Yue, Lea Salonga (Taiwanese), and Sun Shu-Mei (Taiwanese) as the overlooked talents. For the Best Mandarin Female Singer category, after extensive discussions over five rounds, “it was indeed a prolonged and regretful process,” he added.
Regarding the male singer category, Chen stated that Eason Chan did qualify for the final round despite singing mostly in Cantonese. However, the final outcome didn’t favor him.
When questioned about the most deliberated categories this year, Chen recalled that the Best Mandarin Female Singer and Best Arrangement awards had the lengthiest discussions.
In addition, this year’s recipients of the Special Contribution Award are Liu Qingchi and Zheng Huajuan. However, there were wishes for the late singer Teresa Teng to be honored as well, but due to not holding Republic of China citizenship, she couldn’t be considered.
In response to this, Chen Zihong acknowledged that there were discussions concerning this matter. “Looking at the list, I also wondered why Teresa Teng wasn’t included, but that’s the rule, it’s also a regrettable omission,” he expressed.