Country crooner Ying Lee strikes gold on YouTube
If the tally of YouTube views is a barometer of success, luk thung singer Ying Lee Srichumpol must be on Cloud 9 at the moment. The music video for her tune "Khor Jai Ther Laek Ber Tho" has scored a "century break" with 100.6 million views since being upl
And that takes it cruising past the record achieved by Baitoey R-Siam, whose “Rak Tong Perd” (“Nan Oak”) has been watched 87.7 million times in the last 11 months. Ying Lee even gets a certificate from Google (YouTube’s owner) for gluing all those eyeballs to the screen. So she couldn’t keep her pride from bubbling over for long, thanking her fans on Instagram. “It’s a dream come true for a morlam baan nok like me,” she wrote, referring to upcountry folk-country crooners. “I wouldn’t have today without your support!”
These are interesting figures for the music labels too: Ying Lee is on Grammy Gold and Baitoey sings for RS, which has thus far dominated the “modern luk thung” market. Grammy Gold’s confidence certainly got a boost – this is its first artist to surpass the 100-million benchmark.
As things stand, Ying Lee doesn’t have a long way to go to break the all-time Thai YouTube record, which is currently held by “Klai Kae Nai Kue Klai” by the pop group Getsunova. That video has so far drawn nearly 106 million views.
Apple for the teacher
The other 100 million in the news – the Bt100-million box-office take for “The Teacher’s Diary” – isn’t all that big a deal for director Nithiwat Tharatorn. He made that much money with “Seasons Change” too. What’s better, much better, he says, is that a lot of young people who’ve seen the film have been inspired to pursue careers in teaching. “I never thought the movie could have such a positive effect!” Nithiwat says.
He admits it wasn’t easy scripting a flick about the lives of a pair of teachers, but anyone can see that he and his stars, Sukrit “Bie” Wisetkaew and Chermarn “Ploy” Boonyasak, nailed the characterisations in the romantic comedy. They made every viewer wish he (or she) could be a teacher too.
Meanwhile, by way of saying thanks for all the fans’ support, his studio GTH has donated Bt300,000 from the ticket receipts to Samart Sutha, the real-life teacher who inspired Nithiwat to make the movie. Nithiwat had seen a TV documentary about Samart and his classroom aboard a houseboat in Lamphun’s Li district. The man was obviously dedicated to his duties and his students, but that floating schoolhouse could use a bit of fixing up – not to mention electricity – so the cash will come in handy.
Kru Samart made the long trek to GTH in Bangkok to receive the donation himself and, for Nithiwat, that’s what the real success of his movie was all about.
