Jolin Tsai - Musical Career - EMI Music Taiwan's Label-Capitol Records (2006–2009)

EMI Music Taiwan's Label-Capitol Records (2006–2009)

After the release of J-Top, her first album with EMI Music Taiwan Dancing Diva was released on May 12, 2006. This album became Tsai's biggest album yet, selling over 2 million copies in Asia. The album featured her released single "Dancing Diva" (舞孃) along with "Pulchritude" (玩美), "Mr.Q" (The music video for this song shows Tsai getting intimate with Hong Kong pop star Edison Chen.), and the bonus track "Attraction of Sexy Lips"(唇唇欲動) (a song she did as part of an endorsement deal with MaxFactor similar to Anita Mui's song "Hot Red Lips"). The album also featured two of the biggest hits in Asia during the year: the upbeat "A Wonder in Madrid" (馬德里不思議) and the love ballad "Pretence" (假裝). She collaborated with friend and label partner Stanley Huang on the song "Nice Guy" (乖乖牌), which he also helped to write. Tsai had some writing duties on the album, writing the lyrics for the song "The Prologue" (開場白), which many speculated was written about Chou. The album was re-released in July as the "Perfect Celebration Edition" with a DVD featuring music videos of all eleven of the songs on the album. She has done the same thing for Magic, Castle, and J-Game as well.

During the fall of 2006, Tsai began her Dancing Forever World Tour, performing concerts to sellout crowds in Asia and then to audiences in North America and Australia. The huge opening concert in Hong Kong, which took place on her birthday, featured many special guests, including one of Hong Kong's top male artists Eason Chan, Taiwan's rising pop princess Rainie Yang, and Show Luo. Show and Huang also made surprise appearances in other stops of her tour. In the most shocking moment of her tour, she kissed fellow Taiwanese star Elva Hsiao on the lips during one of her concerts. Tsai made guest appearances at her friend Stefanie Sun's concerts, while she and Singaporean male artist JJ Lin took turns appearing at each other's concerts.

Tsai released her third remix album, Dancing Forever (唯舞獨尊) in October 2006, which contained two CDs and a DVD. The first disc contained all new material, including the title track and theme for her tour "Dancing Forever", covers of songs by Chinese singers Sandy Lam and Faye Wong, and the duet "Marry Me Today" (今天你要嫁給我) that she recorded with her idol and mentor David Tao. In this album, she experimented with two other Chinese dialects — Taiwanese and Cantonese (the Canto version of "Pretence" is on the album). Up to this point, she had only released music in Mandarin and English. The second disc included remixes of three dance hits from Dancing Diva, while the DVD featured the LUX-sponsored mini-concert she performed in the summer in Kaohsiung where Huang and Taiwanese boy band Energy also performed.

A month later, Sony released another two-CD compilation album called Jolin Favorite Live Concert Music Selection. This album consisted of remixes of popular songs Tsai recorded under Sony, as well as rare live tracks.

Tsai ended 2006 performing hits like "Mr.Q", "A Wonder in Madrid", "Pretence" and "Dancing Diva" at several New Year countdown parties in Taiwan. According to G-music, Dancing Diva became the biggest selling album of the year in Taiwan, while Dancing Forever reached #15 on the year-end album sales charts. Dancing Diva accounted for 4.26% of all Mandarin album sales in Taiwan for the year, ahead of Jay Chou's Still Fantasy, which accounted for 3.50%. Tsai's popular duet with Tao was considered by many lists to be the #1 song of the year in Taiwan. Singles like "Dancing Diva," "Pretence," and "A Wonder in Madrid" also won many song awards between 2006 and 2007.

On June 8, 2007, Tsai released her second DVD The Acquired Talent (地才), which featured performances from her latest world tour and documented her work in preparing for the tour. The DVD shows footage of her performing dance sequences with concert guests Luo, Huang, and Hsiao. The DVD opened at the top of the Taiwanese audio/video charts and stayed there for thirteen weeks.

On June 16, Tsai won the Most Favorite Female Artist and the Best Mandarin Female Singer Award for the first time at the 18th Golden Melody Awards. Her duet with David Tao won the Best Song Award. Tsai's win for Best Mandarin Female Singer drew criticism from netizens and industry critics, who believed her voice was not as strong as the other nominees (A-mei, Sandy, Angela Chang, and Penny Tai). However, many said that she won due to her all-round talent, hard work, and universal pop appeal. Regardless of the controversy surrounding this award, she won the Most Favorite Female Artist award following a fan vote conducted for a few months prior to the awards show, beating out many other artists such as A-mei, Fish Leong, Hsiao, Sun, Twins, and Yang.

Just a few days before the release of Tsai's new album at EMI Music Taiwan, Sony released another compilation album, Jolin's Final Wonderland (Jolin夢綺地精選). This collection featured almost all the songs Tsai released during her time at Sony in three CDs (The songs were separated into dance songs, cute songs, and love ballads.), as well as a DVD with 22 music videos and a 52-page photo book.

Tsai's second album with EMI Music Taiwan, titled Agent J (特務J), was released on September 21, 2007. The album featured eleven new tracks - the title track "Agent J" (特務J), the ballads "Alone" (一個人) and "Fear Free" (怕什麼), the dance tracks "Bravo Lover" (愛無赦) (best known for its often-imitated dance steps) and "Tacit Violence" (冷‧暴力), and the bonus track "Let's Move It," which was used as a promotional track in commercials for Toyota. The deluxe version of the album contained a 3-part 70-minute music movie filmed in France, London, and Bangkok. The movie, which cost NT$50 million to film, stars Tsai as the leather-clad Agent J and features popular Korean actor Kim Jae Won and Hong Kong stars Stephen Fung and Carl Ng. During the filming of the movie, Tsai had to learn two new forms of dance in 10 days: aerial silk dancing and pole-dancing. She almost paralyzed her right arm and fainted in the process.

According to G-music Taiwan, the album accounted for 45% of album sales and over 65% of Mandarin album sales in Taiwan in its first week of release. Since its release, the album stayed at the number one position for two weeks. Tsai released two more versions of the album: the Champion Special Edition (featuring 10 music videos, 4 dance instruction music videos, and a remix of Bravo Lover) and the No. 1 Special Celebration Edition (featuring the "Let's Move It" music video and her "Agent J" celebration concert with the best male artist at the Golden Melody Awards Nicky Lee from Taiwanese hip-hop group Machi).

Tsai then collaborated with Australian pop queen, Kylie Minogue in a song called "In My Arms", which would be included in the Asian version of Kylie's album X. Tsai was invited to the world premiere of Kylie's movie 'White Diamond', where Tsai presented Minogue with her newest album and a jade bracelet which Tsai personally picked for her.

Soon after, Tsai traveled to Hong Kong for Christmas, attending various functions and performing and winning three awards at the 2007 Metro Showbiz Music Awards, before returning to Taiwan. Tsai again ended off the year performing hits in Taiwan to celebrate the end of 2007. For the second year in a row, Tsai had the best-selling album in Taiwan. According to g-music, sales of Agent J accounted for 3.08% of all album sales in Taiwan and 5.96% of Chinese albums for the year, even higher than the numbers for Dancing Diva a year ago. Agent J also topped the year-end album charts according to Five Music, while The Acquired Talent was the best-selling music DVD of the year.

Like the previous year, Tsai also topped the Hito Top 100 Singles chart for the year. This time her song "Sun Will Never Set" was voted Top Song of the Year by over 340,000 voters.

In April 2008, Tsai incorporated newly learned skills such as flying rings and pole dance in addition to her usual multi-style dances in her concert in Beijing's Workers' Gymnasium.