Jay Chou to release long-awaited album

Pop singer-songwriter Jay Chou released the music video for the title track on his upcoming album, Greatest Works of Art, at noon on Wednesday, garnering more than 6 million views on QQ Music within two hours.

In the video, Chou enters the La Samaritaine, a shopping mall that boasts a history of over 150 years and a landmark of Paris, and plays a melody on the piano that brings him back to the 1920s.

The plot echoes the fictional story told in Chou's directorial debut feature film, Secret, in which the protagonists travel back and forth in time by playing a magic score on a piano. Through his journey in the video, he interacts with iconic artists, including Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali, Chinese painter Chang Yu (1900-66) who went to France in 1920 on work study, and Chinese poet Xu Zhimo (1897-1931), exploring the Mecca for artists at a time when timeless works of modern art and literature were created.

The track's lyrics also pay tribute to such masterpieces as Van Gogh's Starry Night, Edvard Munch's The Scream and Camille Monet's Impression Sunrise.

Pianist Lang Lang also performs in the video. He says it is a creative one which features elements of both pop and classical music.

"Chou got this idea five years ago. Being passionate about art, he hopes more people can become interested in art and feel art is everywhere," Lang said.

For more than 20 years, Chou has been widely hailed as the king of Asian pop and praised for the originality and diversity of his works, earning numerous music awards and influence in the Chinese-speaking music world. It has been six years since the release of the pop star's last album, Jay Chou's Bedtime Stories, in June 2016.

Greatest Works of Art, as the fifth album of the veteran singer-songwriter, is long-awaited by his fans and will be released on July 15. At present, more than 7 million users have preordered the album's digital version on QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo — three online streaming services run by Tencent Music Entertainment Group.