Tóc Tiên

Tóc Tiên
Toc Tien performs in 2011 at the Miss Vietnam of Southern California pageant
Background information
Birth name	Nguyễn Khoa Tóc Tiên
Born	(1989-05-13) 13 May 1989 (age 27) Vietnam
Genres	Pop
Occupation(s)	student, vocalist
Years active	2005-present
Associated acts	Paris by Night
Website	Facebook page

Nguyễn Khoa Tóc Tiên (born 13 May 1989), who uses the stage name Tóc Tiên, is a Vietnamese pop singer. In 2009, she moved to the US to start college, and began appearing regularly on Paris By Night, an overseas Vietnamese-language musical variety show. In 2015, she returned to Vietnam to launch a comeback and released "Vũ Điệu Cồng Chiêng", which became her signature hit.

Toc Tien was born into a wealthy family. She has two younger brothers and was nicknamed Ti within the family home. Her mother is a former ballet dancer. From grades one to five, she was the highest academic achiever in her class. At age 16, she was the first prize winner of a beauty contest sponsored by Fujifilm.

She attended Le Hong Phong High School, one of Vietnam's most renowned high schools, but her grades suffered as her school schedule conflicted with her singing schedule.

In 2009, she moved to California to begin undergraduate studies at Pasadena City College, with ambitions to study a pre-medical course. She then transferred to CSU Long Beach. Initially, she majored in Biology, but later switched to Communications. Although she is generally recognized as a pop star by the Vietnamese students she meets, she does not disclose this status to her non-Vietnamese classmates.

The Vietnam News Agency described Toc Tien as "well known among local teens" (in Vietnam).VNExpress called her a "singer students love." For the release of her album My Turn in 2011, she remade her image as more adult and sensual.

In 2015, Toc Tien launched a comeback in Vietnam. She was a contestant on the popular musical competition show "The Remix" alongside other young pop stars such as Isaac and Sơn Tùng M-TP. During this time she began working with producer Touliver, who remixed her single "Ngày mai". After she performed the remix of this song on the show, it became a sensation. This remix included 2 dance breaks where a gong is prominently featured, and so the song eventually became known to much of the general public as the "Gong dance" (Vũ Điệu Cồng Chiêng) rather than by its original name. The craze over the performance started a trend of Vietnamese youth uploading covers of the dance on YouTube. Later, it was reported by the Vietnamese press that a Khmer singer had copied the dance during a televised performance. When the music video for Vũ Điệu Cồng Chiêng was released in May, it quickly went viral in Vietnam, where it currently has reached over 11 million views as of January 2016. The video was featured in a Thai TV report on the recent rapid development of Vietnamese pop.