ZHU – Chinese American Star for Generation Y

Steven Zhu or just – ZHU

Most of you have probably heard his song “Faded”, at least at the mall or the gym. ZHU is a Chinese-American producer, electronic musician and singer who has been active since the beginning of 2014.

ZHU remains anonymous, asking to be judged by his music alone. He was born in 1989 but his birth date is still a mystery. His decisions to stay anonymous reminds us a lot of the Daft Punk members who are also trying to keep a low profile and retain their privacy as much as possible.

ZHU has offered a lot of good songs since 2014. His style is a mix of dark disco house and mid-tempo electronic pop. He debuted with the album Generationwhy, which was released on July 29, 2016, by Columbia Records. In their review, Soundfiction stated: “The music that makes up the entirety of Generationwhy lives in a dark, neo-noir aesthetic inspired world, giving listeners a blend of music that lies somewhere between the synth inspired sounds of the ’80s built on top of a deep house bassline with the vocal stylings of The Weeknd’s House of Balloons mixtape”.

Generationwhy is his only album to date. Of course in the digital world we live today, we are witnessing regular updates from ZHU in the form of singles. He is changing his course a bit, which is good. It means he is exploring, searching. We were hit hard with a few singles lately – “Nightcrawler”, “Intoxicate”, both from 2017, and the latest, which we liked a lot, “My Life” with Tame Impala.

The New York Times dubbed him as “one of the most musically sophisticated of the current generation of dance music producers”. We can only agree with this statement.

Keep going ZHU. And thank you for the great music you make.

Awesome job.

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