Stefanie Sun’s “Kepler” is a beautiful, mid-tempo M-Pop — that’s Mandarin pop — ballad, which begins with mellow guitars. Guitars that initially sound acoustic, but then there’s a bit of a twang there and it starts to sound like an American country ballad with electric slide guitar. It never quite becomes a country song, but it has just enough of that flavor to give it added character and make it stand out among the sea of other Chinese ballads that will be released this winter. Eventually, there are drums and additional layers of guitars, but it’s always Stefanie’s beautiful and dreamy voice that’s center stage. Another thing that makes this ballad stand out is that it intensifies as it goes on, but it never goes into epic mode like all too many misguided Asian pop ballads that seem to grow louder by the second once they hit the halfway mark, the singer’s voice stretching its range more and more until it damn near reaches its breaking point then it just kind of fizzles out and dissolves until it’s over. Those ballads can be wonderful, but there’s also a place for ballads that pick a mood — or call it a color — and stay that mood without trying to be riveting two thirds into them. Sometimes subtle can be sweet. “Kepler” is that kind of a ballad. As for the title, it’s apparently a nod to Johannes Kepler, who was a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer best known for his laws of planetary motion. The lyric video above shows the moon and stars slowly moving, so it would seem that is what it’s all about.
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