Mawi Mania

Have you heard about this new Malaysian pop star, Mawi? I never had the inconvenience of listening to any of his songs until today.

I was on the Seri Indah bus, on my way to KL when the bus conductor decided to entertain us by putting a VCD on. The usual norm would be a P. Ramlee movie or some Hollywood flick. So I geared myself up hoping it would be “Labu-Labi” or maybe “Tiga Abdul”. I was quite fond of P. Ramlee movies, one of the few Malaysian movies that have both a witty script and talented actors.

Unfortunately though, it was a Mawi concert recorded at the Astro studio. The first song left a little sharp pain in my head. The second made me wholeheartedly regret sitting close to the speaker. The third gave me the urge to smash the TV and the VCD player along with that monster of a VCD inside.

I just could not understand the excitement of the audience. The ladies were giggling and singing along, and mind you most of them were probably over 30. The same applied to the men. Even the bus conductor started singing along to one of his songs, “Cinta Pertama dan Terakhir” or something close to that.

The dude can sing but he seems to make it such an arduous task. He was practically screaming over the microphone. Most of the time he sang some really high “aaaaa ….” and “oooo…” that really sounded mildly annoying. He had no stage presence, no unique way of singing and definitely no style of his own. Just another one of those pop stars that will die out, as soon as a new one comes out.

Above all, what I could not comprehend is, why do artist like Manbai, who obviously has the talent, presence and style do not achieve this level of success? What a dreadful waste!