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Cool Jay
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Before the satin bedsheets and Ducati motorcycles, before the screaming groupies fainting at his shows and the teenage girls making pilgrimages to stroke his piano bench, there was this narrow stretch of blond floorboard between the leather sofa and the teal walls of Alfa Music's studio in a gray, concrete high-rise in eastern Taipei. This was Jay Chou Chieh-lun's world back then, a crawl space where he would curl up and crash between sessions, where he would dream and then redream his melodies and lyrics, where the songs would come to him as snatches of somnambulant soundtrack, and then he would...