Crowd Lu: The Triple Crown Champion Who Was Run Over by a Bus

30-Second Overview: Crowd Lu (盧廣仲), born 1985 in Rende, Tainan, had his leg crushed by a bus during his freshman year of college and self-taught guitar during his hospital stay. He debuted in 2008 and won Best New Artist at the 2009 Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎), followed by an eight-year desert of zero nominations. In 2017, he stunned the industry with a seven-minute single-take eulogy scene in The Wonderful Boy (花甲男孩轉大人, part of the 植劇場 drama production platform — zh only); he won two Golden Bell Awards that year. In 2020, "Your Name Engraved Herein" claimed the Golden Horse Best Original Film Song — at 35, he became the youngest Triple Crown winner in Taiwan's history. His 2026 concert tickets sold out in one minute, with scalpers asking sixty thousand NT dollars a ticket.

On a certain deep night in 2003, at Danshui in Taipei, a freshman in the electrical engineering department of Tamkang University rode out to buy a late-night snack. A bus ran over his leg.¹ Open fracture. Comminuted fracture. Of all the words the doctor said, Crowd Lu later remembered only one thing: he was bored lying in the hospital bed.

His cousin had given him a guitar earlier, which he had never touched. During the months in the hospital, he started watching videos of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Sting online and learning along.¹ Later he would say: "If the accident had never happened — if I hadn't had my leg crushed — I'd probably be working some electrical engineering job now."²

After discharge, he transferred to the Spanish language department and began entering campus singing competitions. That guitar, once a pastime on a hospital bed, became his livelihood for the next twenty years.

Good Morning, Beautiful Morning

Crowd Lu did not become famous from a stage — he became famous from a breakfast shop.

In college he wrote a song called "Good Morning, Beautiful Morning!" (早安，晨之美！). The motivation was mundane: his roommate skipped breakfast, and he wanted to wake him up.³ The earworm chorus — "Yeah yeah yeah" — was originally just there to tease the roommate. The roommate's sleep schedule did not improve, but the song was selected as one of the Top Ten Singles of the Year by the Chinese Music Association.³

Producer Zhong Cheng-hu of Team EAR noticed him. In 2008, his debut album "100 Kinds of Life" (100 種生活) was released. Ten years later, at a vinyl release event, Crowd Lu said one thing: "I could never write songs this good again."⁴

At the 20th Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎) in 2009, this young man from Rende, Tainan, swept Best New Artist and Best Composer.⁵ At the same ceremony, Best Mandarin Album went to Eason Chan — but Eason Chan publicly said from the stage that he felt Crowd Lu's "100 Kinds of Life" was the real best album.⁶

That year he was 23, standing on the Golden Melody stage in shorts and big black-framed glasses. No one knew that eight years of wilderness lay ahead.

Eight Years Without a Nomination

From 2009 to 2017 — eight full years, Crowd Lu did not receive another Golden Melody nomination.⁷

He kept releasing albums: "Seven Days" (七天), "Slow Soul" (慢靈魂), "Pop Songs With Guitar" (有吉他的流行歌曲), and performed at Taipei's Little Arena. But the Golden Melody door had closed.

How deep was this low point? He later admitted he came home and drank every night, his refrigerator packed with beer and red wine.⁸ After completing military service in 2015, he did one thing: he walked home to Tainan from Taipei.

315 kilometers, 11 days, 435,000 steps.⁸ Crossing the mountain roads on the Taipei-Taoyuan border, he faced two or three dozen wild dogs blocking the road and stood frozen for fifteen minutes before he could move again. The first time he saw a road sign reading "Tainan," he cried.⁹

This walk was not a marketing event — it was a songwriter who had lost himself trying to find his way back. He later said the inspiration came from his grandfather, who had once walked from Taipei back to Tainan when a business failure left him without train fare.⁸

"Creation is a form of compensation for life — completing through creative work what reality has left unfinished." — Crowd Lu¹⁰

The Seven Minutes of The Wonderful Boy

In 2017, the 植劇場 (Zhi Juchang — zh only) drama production initiative led by Wang Hsiao-ti broadcast The Wonderful Boy (花甲男孩轉大人). Director Chu Yu-ning cast Crowd Lu as male lead Cheng Hua-chia — a Tainan youth who had spent too many years in university and was fated to become a spirit medium.¹¹

He had never acted before.

In the drama there is a seven-minute memorial oration scene at his grandmother's funeral, in which Crowd Lu must deliver an 800-character eulogy in front of the altar, all in a single take.¹¹ The first time they shot it, every crew member and cast member cried. The director asked for another take, demanding deeper emotional resonance. Crowd Lu performed it completely each time, without breaking.

After filming was done, he slipped away alone into a dark alley and cried for a long time. His co-star Tsai Chen-nan said to him: "Kid, well done!"¹²

That same year he wrote the theme song "Fish" (魚仔) for the drama — a song that begins in Mandarin and switches to Taiwanese in the second half. Music critics noted the language shift: when emotion exceeds what Mandarin can express, the mother tongue takes over naturally.¹³

"Fish" (魚仔) broke 700,000 views in four days of release.¹³ The melody "魚仔魚仔水裡游" (Fish oh fish swimming in the water) spread everywhere.

In 2018, Crowd Lu simultaneously won Best Actor in a Dramatic Program and Best Newcomer Actor at the 53rd Golden Bell Awards¹⁴ — a double win at the same ceremony, extremely rare in Golden Bell history. That same year at the 29th Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎), "Fish" won Song of the Year and Best Composer.⁵

Eight years of wilderness, repaid in full within one year.

Thirty-Five Years Old, Triple Crown

In 2020, Taiwan's LGBT film "Your Name Engraved Herein" (刻在你心底的名字) was released, with Crowd Lu performing the theme song "Your Name Engraved Herein" (刻在我心底的名字).¹⁵ (The film title uses "you" — 你; the song title deliberately uses "me" — 我. The production team wanted the song to be dedicated to the name in every person's heart.)

The song accumulated over 64 million views on YouTube,¹⁶ hitting number one on KKBOX in all four markets: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore.¹⁶ The following year the film launched globally on Netflix, carrying the song into the English-speaking world.

At the 57th Golden Horse Awards in 2020, "Your Name Engraved Herein" won Best Original Film Song.¹⁷ At the 32nd Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎) in 2021, the same song won Song of the Year again — Crowd Lu stepped up to accept the award saying: "I hope the world can look upon all shapes of love with more tenderness."¹⁸

At 35: Golden Melody (2009/2018/2021), Golden Bell (2018), Golden Horse (2020) — all three. Taiwan's seventh Triple Crown winner, and the youngest.¹⁹ Other Triple Crown holders at the same ceremony included Wu Nien-jen and Tsai Chen-nan — the same person who had told him "Kid, well done!" on the set of The Wonderful Boy.¹⁹

But he remains clear-eyed about the other side of awards. "Awards are inherently competitive — I win, and the fans of the other nominees may resent it. I'm going to get criticized again."²⁰

The Plagiarism Storm and a Quiet Response

After "Your Name Engraved Herein" won its awards, television host Wu Tsung-hsien publicly accused the chorus of resembling Richard Sanderson's 1980 song "Reality."¹⁶ Online comparisons were also drawn to Japanese pianist JINBAO's "Jiyugaoka" (自由が丘).

Sanderson himself responded: the chorus "has some similarity" but does not constitute plagiarism, and he praised it as a fine song.¹⁶ Songwriters and the record label denied plagiarism. No legal action was taken, and the awards were not withdrawn. The controversy faded quickly — and throughout it all, Crowd Lu never issued a single public word in response.

From Shorts to the Pilgrimage Road

In 2021 he released his sixth album "Motivational Theory" (勵志論), serving as producer for an entire album for the first time, spanning styles from disco to lofi chill-hop.²¹ His 2025 album "Heartbroken Breakfast Shop" (傷心早餐店) was bolder still — his first all-covers album, reinterpreting ten underrated Mandarin indie love songs, re-arranged with piano and jazz drums.²² From "Good Morning, Beautiful Morning!" to "Heartbroken Breakfast Shop" — the imagery of breakfast runs through his entire career.

In 2024, he hosted the reality show "Mad Walking Brothers: Pilgrimage Quest" (暴走兄弟朝聖趣) alongside Lee Yu-hsi, walking Spain's Camino de Santiago and Japan's Kumano Kodo — two UNESCO-recognized pilgrimage routes.²³ During filming he ran a fever of 40 degrees Celsius but did not stop. His Spanish language department background unexpectedly proved useful on the Camino.

He also voiced the Taiwanese version of Hiro in Disney's "Big Hero 6."²⁴ A guitarist who once had his leg crushed by a bus, voicing a boy-genius robot hero — nobody thought it a mismatch.

The Sixty-Thousand-Dollar Ticket

In March 2026, Crowd Lu announced a full Taiwan tour plus a world tour (Vancouver, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto). Tickets for the four shows in Taipei and Kaohsiung sold out within one minute.²⁵ Scalpers were asking up to sixty thousand NT dollars per ticket — seventeen times the face value.²⁵

He publicly called out the scalpers, added shows, and posted warnings to fans not to be fooled. The ticketing chaos was not a crisis of his making, but it proved something: that young man from Tainan who once sang in shorts at a breakfast shop now commands a market value and ticket scarcity as impossible to believe as his mushroom haircut was back then.

"Like a portable battery, I've received so much help from so many people throughout my journey. After completing a phase of my mission, I need to maintain energy balance — to give back what I've received." — Crowd Lu²⁰

In 2015 he walked 315 kilometers back to Tainan. In 2024 he walked the pilgrimage roads of Spain and Japan. Some people measure how far they have traveled by flight distance. Crowd Lu measures it in footsteps — those feet that were crushed by a bus, that later stepped onto the Golden Melody stage, and finally walked the pilgrimage roads.

Further Reading:

• Eggplant Egg Band — A band that also broke into the mainstream through Taiwanese-language songwriting, winning Best New Artist at the 2019 Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎)
• Taiwan Indie Music — From the underground to the streaming era: how the indie music ecosystem Crowd Lu belongs to evolved
• 植劇場 (Zhi Juchang — zh only) — Wang Hsiao-ti's drama innovation initiative and the birthplace of "The Wonderful Boy"
• Taiwan Hip-Hop and Rap Development — Another evolutionary path of Taiwanese music in the same era

References