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Joey Yung Cho-yee (born June 16, 1980) is a Hong Kong Cantopop singer and actress from Emperor Entertainment Group. She won the "Most Popular Female Singer Award" at the 2003 Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards Presentation with her hit song, "My Pride", and won the same prize consecutively in the next four years, thus emerging as one of the premier Cantonese singers in Hong Kong.

Before 1999: The Road to the Industry
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Joey (right) at Big Echo Karaoke Singing Contest

Joey attended Ma On Shan Lutheran Primary School, and was classmates with Wong Cho Lam when she was in 6th grade.

At the age of 15, Joey participated in many singing contests, including the Big Echo Karaoke Singing Contest, in which she was given the opportunity to be an artist of Go East Entertainment Co. Ltd. However, she did not earn much recognition from Go East, and their contract ended after she recorded the song "The First Time I Want to be Drunk", as the theme song for a film.

After that, Joey continued attending school while working as a clerk and helping her mother manage a fashion boutique. She was later introduced to Golden Pony Records Co. Ltd by an ex-colleague in Go East. However, Golden Pony withdrew its business in Hong Kong not long after Joey joined the company, causing her singing career to be terminated once again. A couple of years later, she started taking singing lessons by the late Roman Tam. In 2009, it was revealed that Joey was a student of Teresa Carpio before she started her singing career.

1999-2000: A Star is Born
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EP poster

In 1998, Joey joined Emperor Entertainment Group (EEG). Her talent was appreciated and she was sent abroad for training to enhance her singing skills in the following year. She also followed her mentor Roman Tam, who was also in EEG, on concert tours to gain experience as a performer.

On 29th September, 1999, Joey's debut album EP was released. It charted on the IFPI Album Charts (based on sales) for 23 weeks, breaking the record for the most consecutive weeks on the IFPI album chart in Hong Kong, and sold 130,000 copies in Hong Kong alone. In later prize-giving ceremonies held by different media organizations, she won many awards together with Cecilia Cheung.

In January 2000, Joey's apartment was set ablaze. In the same year, she made an appearance in her debut film, "Winner Takes All", and her first television drama series "The Green Hope". That year, she also released two CDs, including her second EP, EP2, and her first studio album, Who Will Love Me. At the same time, she became the spokesperson of many brands, such as Four Seas, the Red Cross Movement, and NetvigatorYung also held her first concert at the Hong Kong Coliseum, titled ~H2O+ Joey Yung See You Everywhere Charity Concert.

2001-03: Elevated to Stardom
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"Grand on Stage" MV

In 2001, Joey released her first compilation album Love Joey, which later became the "Best Selling Album of the Year". She then released two Cantonese albums, All Summer Holiday and Grand on Stage. In November, she held her second live concert and first concert series, ~H2O+ Joey Yung Live in Concert 2001 at the Hong Kong Coliseum, and began her singing career in Taiwan after she released her first mandarin album, Honestly. By the end of the year, her career reached a crisis as a result of strained vocal cords and criticism of being plump.

In 2002, Joey received the approval of her company to take dancing and make-up lessons abroad. Two months later, she came back to Hong Kong and released her album Something About You. She then became the spokesperson of Nissin and Nikon. At the end of the year, she released her second compilation album Love Joey Love 2.

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Show Up! Live backstage

In 2003, Joey's song, "My Pride" became very popular. In the fad of slimming in Hong Kong, Joey became the spokesperson of a slimming parlor and had her body slimmed, presenting herself with a new sexy image. She held her third concert Neway Joey Yung Live Show Up! at the Hong Kong Coliseum.

At the end of the year, Joey dominated all the major music awards ceremonies, winning a handful of prestigious awards including the "JSG Most Popular Female Singer" award (making her the second youngest singer in history to have won this prize). She also won her first "Best Female Singer Gold" award at the CRHK Music Awards, becoming the youngest singer ever to win this award. Following this, she began her first worldwide tour, Show Up World Tour, which included stops in Canada, Australia, the United States, Mainland China, Macau, and Malaysia.

2004-06: The Love Songs Queen
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"Chihuahua" MV

In 2004, Joey continued her sexy image with Nin9 2 5ive and her first photo album The Real Joey, Glamour in London. Her photo album was greatly accepted by the public and ran out of stock shortly after its release. Her second album in 2004, Give Love A Break, was greatly appreciated by the public as well, breaking the platinum mark with pre-orders alone. Around December, Yung released a Cantonese cover of "Chihuahua" as part of a massive Coca-Cola advertising campaign in Hong Kong. At the year-end music awards won more than 20 awards and received the highest honor award again, "The Media Award", which is given to the singer who accumulated the most awards from the four music award ceremonies in Hong Kong.

In 2005, Joey released her third compilation album, Love Joey Love 3, as well as a new album, Bi-Heart. Her fourth major concert, Sony Ericssion Reflection of Joey's Live 2005, spanned eight days in October and November. "Pointless Doing", the concert theme song, was sent to South Korea for mixing and re-arranging. Sponsored by Sony Ericsson, EEG found the top production crew to produce the music videos for the theme songs. After the concert, Joey suffered from sore throat due to a strain in her vocal cord. Several days after, she had to work without chatting with other people in an attempt to help her vocal cord relax. Despite her heavy workload she was able to spend several days receiving acupuncture treatment in Nanjing to have her voice restored. In addition, under the recommendation of one of her producers, Joey started to take singing lessons with Christine Samson, who is a well-renowned voice coach to many Cantopop singers.

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Joey at Reflection Live

By this time her albums sales had surpassed five million worldwide, an impressive feat as the average Cantopop album only sell around 100,000 copies. It was also estimated that her income from endorsements alone in 2004 was about Hong Kong dollar $10 million. In 2005, she purchased two connecting flats, named "The Legend", at Jardine's Lookout, Hong Kong for HK$40 million. This investment came to no surprise though, considering the fact that she earned HK$60 million in the previous year.

Following the success of the eight-night Reflection Live, the live albums of the concert was certified triple platinum (> 120,000 copies), which was quite a rare accomplishment in today's Cantopop industry.

In early 2006, Joey released her tenth Cantonese studio album Ten Most Wanted. More time was put into the production of this album than any of her previous albums. Joey said she wanted to experiment with new musical styles and work with different musicians. Hence, she worked with Mavis Fan, who wrote two songs on the album, "Get Fit with Jane Fonda" and "Torned Tongue".

2007-08: Continuous Breakthrough
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Making of Safari Musical

At the end of December 2006, Joey released her Cantonese album Close Up. Songs include "Joyful", that is her first collaboration with Hanjin Chan, her biggest hit song in the previous year, "Beautiful Encounter", and her third plug, "One Love, One Lesson". The album received good response from the public, and the first version went out of stock at many online CD stores like Yesasia. It was also reportedly sold out at many stores all over Hong Kong. She released the second version in early 2007', which included a bonus DVD with the music videos for "Beautiful Encounter" and "Joyful".

At the end of January 2007, Neway helped organize a musical for Joey, entitled, NCM!ive Scream to Joey Safari Musical. Other singers who performed at the musical include Anthony Wong, At17, Hins Cheung, Yumiko Cheng, Vincent Wong, and Sun Boy'z.

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Joey visiting Kenya

On July 7, 2007, Joey performed at the "Live Earth Concert", an annual event developed to combat climate change, which was held in Shanghai that year.

Joey was invited to be Hong Kong's ambassador of 30 Hour Famine, organized by World Vision. She visited Kenya in March 2007, and shared many of her thoughts about this trip on her blog and on radio interviews.

Joey then released her 5th Mandarin album, titled Little. The title track was produced by Jay Chou. The album has received tremendous success, being the best selling Mandarin album Joey has ever released.

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Joey at StarLight concert

Joey held her sixth concert at the Hong Kong Coliseum in early 2008. The concert was titled Johnnie Walker Keep Walking StarLight Joey Yung Live 08, and the theme of the concert was "light". Joey performed a number of dance numbers as well as her famous ballads. "The Power Medley", a 20-minute intense dance medley of her fast songs, was well received. The concert spanned over 10 days, proving her popularity as Hong Kong's most popular female singer. The concert was highly praised, and thus led to a Part II of her concert, which spanned four nights, making the concert a 14-day concert. In mid February, Joey then traveled to New York City to attend dance lessons, in hope of further improving her dancing skills. Joey also sang several official songs for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Her world tour began shortly afterwards, with shows in Malaysia, Canada, the United States, Mainland China, Singapore, and Macau.

2009-10: The First Decade
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2009 marks the 10th anniversary of Joey's singing career. To celebrate the occasion, Joey and EEG released two albums, a documentary, as well as a mini concert. This includes a Cantonese album and a Mandarin album, titled A Time For Us and Very Busy respectively. Her 10th year anniversary mini-concert Joey Yung Perfect 10 Live 2009 was held on 4th October, 2009 and tickets for this concert were sold out within seven minutes. Unlike her past concerts that spanned for days or even weeks, Joey performed only two shows in one day. Perfect 10 was more a intimate and exclusive concert, and was held at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre's Grand Theater, where Joey won a championship in her first major singing contest in 1995. The live album was then released in December. The live albums contain the "Perfect 10 Documentary", which recorded the deepest expression of Joey and her friends.

In late 2009, Joey performed in her 5th concert, "Music Is Live", with Eason Chan and received commendations from different medias. Moreover, Joey won the "Media Award" for the 3rd time that year, having previously won the award in 2003 and 2004 (i.e. Joey won the most number of awards in the four major music in 2009).

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Continuing the 10th Anniversary project, an EP titled Joey Ten was released together with the Joey Ten Boxset in early 2010. This EP includes 10 different covers and five brand new songs. The first and second plugs from the EP received very great results in the four major media, "Double Champion" getting a No.1 from all four of them while "Peach Adventure" gets No.1 from three of them. The third plug, named "Always Seeing the Angels", is a song labeling Joey's character, and describing her friends as angels.

In March, Joey wrapped up her StarLight tour with two final shows in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. In August, Joey released her new EP Airport and in November she delivered her Nokia Joey Yung Concert Number 6 at the Hong Kong Coliseum, which was her sixth major solo concert (and seventh overall) held at the Coliseum. The concert received great reviews by critics and fans alike, calling it a worth successor to her successful StarLight tour.

2011-12: Short Break and Evolve
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Joey at London concert

For the first couple of months in 2011, Joey travelled around the world and go on her first major break since 2002. She had earlier stated that in 2011 she will focus her time on the Mandarin market, recording a new Mandarin Studio Albums and doing promotions in Taiwan and Mainland China. However, the whole project was postponed until 2012.

Joey performed a show in London, England on 26th April, 2011 at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall, making it her first concert in Europe. This also marked Joey as the first female Chinese singer, and the third Chinese singer overall, after Eason Chan in 2010 and her mentor Roman Tam in 1979, to perform at the Royal Albert Hall.

In September 2011, two years after the previous one, Joey released a new Cantonese album, Joey & Joey. The album features many new musicians, including singers Jun Kung, and Khalil Fong. The album received many great responds from the four major media. Songs like "Forest of Flowers" and "Wallpaper" are very popular in the public. Later, it has the highest sales in 2011 and it is regarded as Joey's best album.

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Joey in Concert YY

In early 2012, Joey restarted her Number 6 World Tour in Macau and America. On February, Joey shared the stage of "Concert YY" by her friend and designer, Wyman Wong. She sang amount of songs each night with beautiful pieces of costume. During that period, Joey recorded "Drama Series" for the TVB drama, "The Hippocratic Crush". The song was also a great success due to more than 2 million views on Internet.

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Joey in DIVA

Starting in late 2011. Joey filmed in a big budget film titled "DIVA" produced by Chapman To. The story revolved around a successful pop diva, which To cites is the reason why he chose Joey. In an interview, he stated "a movie about a diva obviously requires a diva to play the main role." He does not agree with the general consensus that Joey is a bad actress, and hopes that the film can show her true acting potential. The film was finally released on August 16, 2012, which received mostly good comments, praising Joey has improved a lot in acting skills. Eventually more than 4 million box office was received.

Concentrating back on music industry, cooperating with some famous, new producers, Joey released her seventh Mandarin album, Moment, in July 2012, several promotional live shows were done in Mainland China and Taiwan. Songs from the album unexpectedly performed well in four media, especially in Commercial radio, resulted two #1s and one #2. The third plug, "Greater Vigor" was most popular at that time, for its heavy dance beats, heavy music video and hardcore choreography.

2013-14: Won Critical Acclaim
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Promotional image of Little Day

Two years later, Joey started recording process of a new Cantonese album, Little Day, in late 2012. After months of waiting, she finally released the first plug, "View in a New Light" in May. The album, which Alex Fung contributed in most of the songs, was also released in August 2013. Its second plug, "Skylights", which was writen by Pakho Chau, received great response from the public and several awards at the four main year-end music awards. Once again, the music video invited Bill Chia as the director. After the great success of "Drama Series", Joey recorded "Sequel" as the theme song of the sequel of the TV series.

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Joey at Concert 1314

To further promote Little Day, Joey held a MOOV Live 2013 on September 23, 2013, first time and first person in Guangzhou. Singing all the songs from the new album, the live recording was included in a new compilation album, Hopelessly Romantic Collection. Plus All Delicious Collection, these two compilations included some of Joey's most favored love songs and dance songs, respectively. Remarkably, the two albums were not in the "Love Joey" series. Getting 2 weeks of number 1 consecutively in album chart of the whole territory, Hopelessly Romantic Collection especially did well in sales.

After finishing the last stop of Number 6 world tour, Joey announced her new concert in Hong Kong, Ageas Joey Yung in Concert 1314, which was held at December 2013 to January 2014. The festivals-themed concert was her first cross-year concert. The 15-show concert also broke her personal record of number of shows again. Six dancers from New York were also invited to be the dancers on the show for the first time.

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Joey at Burberry fashion show.

2014 was mainly a relaxing year for Joey. She appeared as a guest performer in several friends' concerts, like Jay Chou, Pakho Chau, Hacken Lee and Hins Cheung. She also attended to London to attend the Burberry fashion show. Joey was also one of the guest on "Chef Nic", a cooking, travelling TV show hosted by Nicholas Tse. Nevertheless, as to keep her appearance in media, she still recorded and plugged a few songs, including two Mandarin duets with Nicholas Tse and Leo Ku respectively. In the middle of the year, she tended to make a full-length album with all upbeat songs. However, the plan was pushed back due to unknown reasons. Around that time, she worked with Wyman Wong again for an upcoming EP release. They tried different new styled songs, like "Natural Awkwardness" and "Optimism", which both were produced by Wyman himself. At the end of the year, Joey began her Concert 1314 world tour in United States.

2015-17: Slowed Down but Not Stopped
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Joey and Jackie Cheung.

Joey continued her music project with Wyman and released a cover of Jackie Cheung's song (who also appeared in the music video), "This Close, That Far". The extended play that included all four singles, named Me, Re-Do was finally released in April, along with the last plug, "Rosy". Both songs received good results from the four major media in Hong Kong.

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Joey & Hacken during JYxHL.

Apart from her Concert 1314 world tour, Joey announced a co-headlining concert with Hacken Lee in Hong Kong. This was a continuation of the promise that the duo made during their Music is Live Concert, back in 2004. This time, the concert was highly anticipated and welcomed by the public. Since the tickets got sold out very quickly, they decided to add 4 shows to the original 8-show concert, resulting a 12-show concert in September. Much further, their respective record company agreed to release a live recording DVD/Blu-ray, which also got impressive sales record. Due to the huge success, they even brought the show into a world tour, mainly travelled to the United States and mainland China. Commercially, Joey became the spokesperson for Shu Uemura, one of her favorite brand. They shot 7 different looks for the campaign. Besides, she and Broadway Electronic's cooperation marked the 10th year in 2015.

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Joey in My Secret Live.

Back to Joey's personal music work, Joey released "Evening Jukebox" and "Gotta Get High" to conclude 2015. Musically, both songs' styles were quite different than Joey past work. She then released dancey "Available", which was a three media no.1 hit, and shot the music video in South Korea, before finally released the Cantonese album, J-POP in June 2016. Remarkably, this album brought her her first Ultimate Best Album in Ultimate Song Chart Awards Presentation. That year, she also released the first compilation album, A Hundred and One: The Best of Joey, trying to gain back the Taiwanese audience.

After wrapping up the JYxHL world tour in 2017, Joey announced and started to prepare a side track concert, My Secret Live. It was the first time she held a concert at the Hong Kong Academy Of Performing Arts, since she wanted to get closer to the audience. Due to the limited seats and her popularity over the years, all 17 shows were sold out. As a giveback to her loyal fans, she re-recorded 2 classic side tracks, "The Best Time" and "Please", in new arrangements.

2018 - Present: The Second Decade
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Joey in Searching for Answers.

For the first half of 2018, Joey took recording process gradually. Initially, she planned to release a Cantonese album and a Mandarin album before the end of the year. However, as plan changed, she released a Cantonese plug, "Science of Heart" instead. The Dear Jane and Wyman Wong penned song received great critical acclaims. The song was also in pop-rock style which Joey had not tried for a long time. The song received three number 1s and brought Joey her first Ultimate Top Ten Songs in first place.

In the latter half of 2018, Joey focused on her eighth Mandarin album, Searching for Answers, six years after the last one. This time Joey returned to Taiwan for most promotions and invited a lot of Taiwan talents in writing songs, filming music videos and more. She even held several small concerts promoting the album, including the Searching for Answers Concept Concert in Taipei. Despite the songs released were not as popular as Joey's Cantonese songs, the album was still charted at number 1 for 2 weeks in Hong Kong. She also released 6 unique, different-styled videos for the album.

Entering 2019, Joey released another Cantonese plug, "Eternity". Joey revealed that the song was shelved for a long time. Eventually Joey released the song as the opening of her 20th anniversary celebration in the industry. She also invited the famous Japanese musician Yusuke Hatano for arranging the song. The music video was directed by Bill Chia, who also included past videos of Joey to fit the song's theme.

Later in the 1st KKBOX Hong Kong Music Awards, Joey premiered "Pretty Crazy". This song was intended to be the first collaboration between Joey and Korean ex-celebrity Seungri. The plan was shelved due to his scandal in South Korea. The upbeat K-pop style song still received great response and got three number 1s in Hong Kong. Long time friend Hins Cheung even parodied the video as an alternate way to promote.

In August 2019, Joey returned to Hong Kong Coliseum to embark her tenth major concert, Pretty Crazy Tour. 6 shows were added to the initial 12 shows and all tickets for public sale were sold out in 24 hours. Joey filmed a music special Love in L.A. in Los Angeles prior to the preparation of the show.

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