Skip Beat! Original Soundtrack Various artists The idol drama Skip Beat! stars Taiwan’s Ivy Chen as well as Choi Si Won and Lee Dong Hae from the popular K-pop boyband Super Junior. No surprises then that Super Junior M – the Mandarin-singing offshoot of Super Junior which includes Choi and Lee – contribute to the soundtrack as well. Opening theme S.O.L.O. and ending theme That’s Love are bouncy poppy numbers that are easy on the ears. Just don’t listen too closely – the Mandarin enunciation is rather stilted and awkward at times. For a more impressive show of pipes, head for the ballad Wait by A-lin, rock ballad Hands by Shin and electro-rocker Future by Mify from the girl group Roomie. Flame Of Love Hu Xia The hit Taiwanese film You Are The Apple Of My Eye (2011) not only turned actors Kai Ko and Michelle Chen into stars, but it also launched China singer Hu Xia (below) into the big time. The theme song Those Bygone Years was a poignant ballad about missed opportunities that was perfect for Hu’s pristine and youthful vocals. And it did more for him than any song on his debut album Hu Ai Xia (2010). Tacked on as a bonus track, it is still the most memorable thing here. As with his previous record, there is a preponderance of love ballads and that makes it hard to get through Flame in one sitting. Let Me Love You seems like an attempt to recapture some of that Apple magic, since “Let me continue to love you” was a key piece of dialogue from the film. But Hu might want to think about moving on. Lonely Fairytales starts off promisingly with its unusually structured stanzas. It is too bad, then, that the track lapses into conventional emo ballad territory when it hits the chorus. The good news is that he sounds a little more impassioned than usual on the title track. But it is not quite enough to set my world aflame. (ST)