vũ discography

I present you the second artist from what I call the hanoi trilogy, the three artists that I consider to make up different sounds in the song and different hues in the self-portrait of hanoi. hanoi is famous, or shall I say, infamous, for its slowness, latency, almost nonchalantly (that's why there's the saying hà nội không vội được đâu, or don't ever dream to rush in hà nội). I'm talking about only being able to move 8km in 1.5 hours in peak traffic hours. however, it's also a very tender feeling to it thanks to its lakes and adrenaline rushes that you get every time a sidewalk ends abruptly and you have to cross the streets. chủ tịch kim already captured the adrenaline rush, vũ will capture the softness, and wren evans will be here soon enough to show you the modern art of this old city and empire. today, let us talk about what is soft and tender, with vũ, whose name literally means feather in sino-vietnamese.

vũ (stylized Vũ. / uppercase V, ends with a dot), is a vietnamese musician that's also known as hoàng tử indie (the king of vietnamese indie music). I really like his name, how simultaneously simple and nuanced his name is. to talk about simplicity, it is very easy to read and spell vũ, even for foreign speakers. they might not get the tone, but they get the vu part right (voo). vu also means seen in french past tense, which is a feeling that lots of his songs capture: in hindsight, in retrospect, already seen, already lived, already experienced, déjà vu.

to talk about the nuances, his name has 32 different meanings in sino-vietnamese. great (as in size), dance, coddle, porch, disappointment, military, violence, bird feather, rain, but also new plant shoots, parrot, some sort of minerals, name of a river, king, province, king, asian wine bottle, etc. it's very funny because his name lowkey captures his songwriting universe: rain, but also where to shield from it, to coddle and cuddle, diíappointment, regrets (should haves, could haves, would haves), violence within oneself and strain between two people in a relationship, but also the tenderness of feathers. it's a graceful waltz through all the peaks and troughs of the waves in a relationship.

he shares a similarity with wren evans that all asian kids can relate: their parents never want him to start a career in music, but they all did it somehow starting out with soundcloud. his dad was in military and his mom was a teacher, the classic traditional vietnamese family model. they cared more about his grades than his love for poetry and music (which makes me sad because what makes cultures interesting is what their people did in their freetime, not when they were working). that means that he graduated from the academy of military science and then became an english lecturer at the special forces officer school as his family wanted him to do a career in music.

I think about vũ as cigarettes after sex (which I never finished their discography because it sounded all the same and hence very boring) if they were solo and vietnamese. some artists' musical taste palette is very diverse, but the one by vũ is very monotonic with occasional experimentations here and there. he sticked to what he knew best: sad and break up songs. when I learn past french tenses I think about him and what tenses he would've used if he wrote songs in french (lots of imparfait I'll say, cause we're talking about regrets).

his music feels like this: y e a r n i n g.

he got engaged with his girlfriend, who was the daughter of christian dior in vietnam in 2023. she was a big fan of carrie bradshaw and mr big in sex and the city. that was exactly how he proposed to her, not with diamond rings but the pair of shoes that carrie bradshaw got proposed in, cobalt blue manolo blahnik hangisi.

I was lucky to have a chance to see him live in 2024 summer at ntpmm. both vũ’s songs and performance style are characterized by his candor and simplicity in his delivery to the audience.

dissecting discographies

vũ wrote many singles, eps, and collabs, but so far, he’s released 3 albums. personally, I like the singles and collabs better than the eps and albums. his notable collaborations include the one with lukas graham (happy for you), dear jane (a hong kong band in những lời hứa bỏ quên, or forgotten promises), binz (vietnamese american rapper famous for bigcityboi, in the song bình yên, or peace). my favorite one is chậm lại (slow down), which encourages us to stop, enjoy, and see how far we’ve come. sometimes he sings about the city he loves the most and where he’s from, or hanoi in xuân hà nội (hanoian spring) and hà nội gen trội (nouveau hanoi). other than that, most songs are of suffering pre and post relationship, all the way from the crush to after breakup phase.

2019 vũ trụ song song / parallel universes

2022 một vạn năm / ten thousand years

2024 bảo tàng của nuối tiếc / the museum of regrets

the red bandana in my room is a transmusical item
it's inspired by vũ's chậm lại, adé's (therapie taxi lead singer) et alors ??? and girl in red

my favorite lines

my favorite thing about curating vietnamese music remains how private it feels. I’m writing about all of this in english, but the lyrics guards the deepest of my secrets from the reader unless they know the language. a long time ago, my english teacher remarked how she hates that english is not a private language anymore as everyone now speaks them. it’s always good and cool to have a language that is your hiding place, where you can just be in it and not being expected to do anything, like lorde in the love club and margot in the royal tenenbaums (page 116).