1975-1993: #89, Shi Hsiao-rong, “Shi Hsiao-rong” (施孝榮, 施孝榮專輯) (1981) (Shi Xiaorong)

Shi Hsiao-rong, Shi Hsiao-rong, 1981

Shi Hsiao-rong, Shi Hsiao-rong, 1981

ranking: #89 on 1975-1993 list

Shi Hsiao-rong’s self-titled record (施孝榮專輯) represents a fantasy of pop multiculturalism in Taiwanese campus folk.  In other words, it is a product of its time, though we still have much to learn from it.  Shi Hsiao-rong is an aboriginal of the Paiwan tribe in Southern Taiwan.  His music evokes his aboriginal roots, not to explicitly celebrate difference, but to musically forge a kind of cultural harmony.  More specifically — and importantly — this harmony is dictated by a hegemonic Chineseness.

Take “Ode to Red Cliff” (赤壁賦), which begins with a thunderous adventure-film call-to-arms.  Together with the exotic “ho-hay!” intro, the opening moments of this tale of heroism borrows the fantasy of the primitive, in order to paint a scene from classical Chinese history: a Three Kingdoms battle by way of Su Dongpo (蘇東坡) and images of the jiangshan.

Nowhere is this ethnocentric logic more obvious than on the aptly-titled “Chinese Love” (中華之愛), which begins with a similarly thrilling horn — a call to attention.  Attention to what?  The lyrics make no mistake: “Return return!  To the lovely Jiangnan of my memory”, “Harness the Great Wall!  No harness is strong enough for the surging gallop of my boiling blood! / Harness the Great Wall!  No harness is strong enough for the deepness of my memory!”  The return of the primitive (i.e. horse-riding) is a return to… what?  A mythical China?  Do aboriginal Taiwanese have memories of the triumph of the Great Wall?  Cultural memory is a tricky thing; pop music movements like campus folk can dissipate that trickiness into the natural triumph of snare drum gallops, disco sizzle, root-seeking tambourines, choral harmonies, and string-section heroics.

When the album doesn’t use Shi’s aboriginal connotations to celebrate Chineseness, it uses a Han perspective to gaze at aboriginal culture.  The famous opening track “Visiting Spring” (拜訪春天) is justly beloved for using aboriginal rhythms (but Mandarin lyrics) to reinvigorate campus folk.  Its stomping-sway is as delightful as a pastoral prance or a campfire chorus.  Its variations on the exotic chorus (solo lead, background singers, all together, then slowed-down) is as mythical as the seasons turning.  It ends with, of course, intoxication: “Ah…I’m drunk many times over. / I…am drunk many times over.”  In other words, this is “world music” tameness, but worse: for Taiwan, this isn’t the music of the world, but the music of one’s hometown, though shaken of its spirit by the town bully.

Given its age, all of this would be easily forgivable until we remember that campus folk sprang from “modern folk,” which was spearheaded by an aboriginal with political motivations: Kimbo (胡德夫).  Shi Hsiao-rong, on the other hand, is a product of a TV talent show, a commodity from the very beginning.

Taken as campus folk and as commodity, Shi Hsiao-rong’s album has moments that transcend the cliches, but also moments that stutter over them embarrassingly.  An example of the latter: when track four roars “fly! fly!” in all of its tortured campus folk cheesiness, it’s ridiculous enough.  When, two tracks later, he does another “fly! fly!” chorus, he sputters and crashes.  But I do like the album’s Xu Zhimo (徐志摩) adaptation, “Under the Moon, Pieces of Shadow from Thunder and Sky” (月下雷峰影片), one of campus folk’s best borrowings of poetry, whose yearning chorus is even gentler, and perhaps more moving, than the famous “Saying Good-bye to Cambridge Again” (再別康橋).

 

1993-2005: #60, Karen Mok, “Karen Mok on the Twelfth Floor” (莫文蔚, 十二樓的莫文蔚) (2000) (Mo Wenwei)

Karen Mok, Karen Mok on the Twelfth Floor, 2000

Karen Mok, Karen Mok on the Twelfth Floor, 2000

ranking: #60 on 1993-2005 list

I’m going to have to agree with an old Taiwanese Box Office magazine review of Karen Mok’s first Mandarin album, To Be (做自己): Karen Mok (莫文蔚) has all the right elements, but she’s no music star.  On Karen Mok on the Twelfth Floor (十二樓的莫文蔚), Mok’s most acclaimed Mandarin album, the parts are all there — a pro producer Jonathan Lee (李宗盛), bold themes of a woman’s independence, a cheeky Being John Malkovich album cover — but I was never all that moved.  It even took me quite a number of listens before I warmed up to many of the songs.

Could it be that the chill-out vibe of tracks like “Twelfth Floor” (十二樓) and “Lunar Eclipse” (月蝕) slowed down, then melted Mok’s charisma into some sleepy Starbucks soundtrack?  Doubtful, as those hushed mood pieces are the album’s most inventive moments.  “Twelfth Floor” in particular does a hopscotch skip with its slinky piano and lets Mok glide through the syncopation and the elongated “ah-aaah” choruses.

No, I’d say it’s that Mok’s voice simply isn’t lonely enough to carry the torch on songs like “Oh Lonely Lovers” (寂寞的戀人啊), not lazy enough to bring out the carefree thrills of “Couldn’t Care Less” (懶得管), and not manic enough for “Addicted to Love” (愛情中毒) — the latter which has too few thorns to puncture the heart as Alanis Morissette (which the song channels) might.  At the album’s dullest moments, like “Two Girls” (兩個女孩), we have proficient vocals and decent melody and lyrics, but it’s almost as if Mok’s inability to elevate the material makes the instrumental arrangement that much more cliched and the performance that much lazier.  Even a lesser singer like Stefanie Sun brings more expressiveness and personality to the kind of breezy rocker-pop that Mok attempts on songs like “Your Heaven” (你的天堂).

This doesn’t sound like Karen Mok the actress who brought the thunder to films like Fallen Angels or even God of Cookery.  Mok’s star shines brightly in the movie world, but without the strong compositions (like Tanya Chua’s “Fluffy” (起了毛球) or Lee’s “Twelfth Floor”), Mok’s music never takes off from the ground floor.

[Note: I used the English titles provided on the album back cover, instead of directly translating from the Chinese titles.]

 

1975-1993: #19, Sylvia Chang, “Busy and Blind” (張艾嘉, 忙與盲) (1985) (Zhang Aijia)

Sylvia Chang, Busy and Blind, 1985

Sylvia Chang, Busy and Blind, 1985

ranking: #19 on 1975-1993 list

If Sylvia Chang’s Childhood lingered fondly on times past, her follow-up Busy and Blind (忙與盲) takes a hard long look at the present — specifically, freezing the bustle of everyday life and contemplating what it means to be a professional, thirty-something woman in contemporary Taiwan.  The album’s title track even interrupts a whirlwind of lovers, perfume, cabinets, and cigarettes to chant out loud: “Busy, busy, busy!  Busy, busy, busy!” “Blind, blind, blind!  Blind, blind, blind!”  [In Chinese, the monosyllabic "busy" is a pun for "blind."  I can't translate it, so I'll settle for awkward alliteration.]

Honestly, I didn’t see this coming.  Sylvia Chang (張艾嘉) kept company with some of Taiwan’s most talented musicians and filmmakers, and one wondered if it was the collaboration with mad geniuses like Lo Ta-yo and Edward Yang that allowed Chang to shine.  Busy and Blind may be produced by the talented Jonathan Lee (李宗盛), but it’s a work of stunning personal nakedness.  This is a Sylvia Chang album, through and through.  If we didn’t know her before, we know her now.  “Sylvia Loves Home” (艾嘉愛家) (another untranslatable pun) may have touching lyrics by author Chang Da-chun (張大春), but listen to the way Sylvia Chang sings the “la-la-la” break.  That trace of fatigue and broken innocence… that bouncy persistence nevertheless…  You can’t fake that.  It breaks your heart.

Sylvia Chang was only 32 when Busy and Blind came out, but she enters mid-life with surprising modesty, having traveled her share of detours and wrong turns.  “Every time I open my luggage, the months and years spill everywhere / Every time I close my luggage, I experience again growing up,” she sings on the charming “Luggage” (箱子).  The motif of travel is announced from the album’s opening moment.  On “747 to a Strange Land” (飛向異鄉的747), she sings, “Finally I leave / flying into blue. / Please envelop these tranquil memories so I can forget / our sorrow and our joy.”  Starting with these lines is a wistful proclamation to contemplate the crossroads so one can move on.

But moving on isn’t so easy.  We know, because we literally get a glimpse of Sylvia Chang (the person, the celebrity) as she goes about her day.  Side B of the original recording (tracks 6-10 on the CD) is less a compilation of songs than slices of a day in the life of Sylvia Chang.  The rumbling of a motorcycle fades into the distance; a phone rings and Sylvia picks up.  “Why don’t you come over, we can talk?” she asks.  “Talking is no use, I’ll call you back in a couple of days.”  “Fine.”  We get a chronicle of the rest of her day in these sonic snippets, and the bursts of music in between are like interludes in a rock musical.  She takes her breakfast, heads to the store, wanders about, then whispers in song, “Actually the solitary life isn’t so bad. / There’s the occasional sorrow / but I don’t think anyone can notice.”  Suddenly, we’re in a reprise of “What Meaning Does Love Have” (愛情有什麼道理), this time a duet with Jonathan Lee that has woman and man alternating parts, lost in each other’s solitude.

Later, Sylvia reads a letter from a friend (or is it sister?) she hasn’t spoken to in years.  She responds with a letter of her own.  The exchange turns into a song, “Dearest, How Are You” (親愛的你好嗎), about the years (and the tedium) that has passed as sisters drifted apart.  But not everything has changed, has it?  Ah, but the next song has an answer.  “What Doesn’t Change” (不變的是) is love, and thus sadness, and thus one’s stubbornness in the face of emotion.

The use of ambient sound, pieced-together recordings, and the presence of a main character (gleaned through her footsteps, voice, etc.) makes the narrative Side B an experience full of surprises, and certainly makes David Tao’s self-titled album slightly less of the trailblazing record I once thought it was.  (Both albums, interestingly enough, begin with planes and later involve telephone messages.  In Tao’s, these elements bring him a cosmopolitan cool.  In Chang’s, they represent a longing beyond the banalities of the everyday.)

As a film director, Sylvia Chang has traversed similar territory — in particular in her 2004 film 20, 30, 40.  But Busy and Blind manages to distill a woman’s experience with so much more creative energy and pure emotional force.  The lyrics, such as those by novelists like Chang Da-chun and Yuan Chiung-chiung (袁瓊瓊), are really something else, and I feel I’ve yet to properly unpack all of their playfulness.  But it’s that Sylvia Chang embodies these words and sounds as an inspiring protagonist that gives the album its weight.  All of the charm and intelligence Sylvia Chang brings to her film roles is multiplied with each break into song on Busy and Blind.

 

1993-2005: #64, Fish Leong, “Courage” (梁靜茹, 勇氣) (2000) (Liang Jingru)

Fish Leong, Courage, 2000

Fish Leong, Courage, 2000

ranking: #64 on 1993-2005 list

Commentators like to attribute the aborted breakout that was supposed to be Grown Up Overnight (一夜長大) to the September 21, 1999 earthquake that killed over 2,400 people in Taiwan and derailed publicity plans.  But what doesn’t get said about that debut record of Malaysian singer Fish Leong (梁靜茹) was that it simply wasn’t very strong.  The “all-grown-up” teen look Leong assumed was never that convincing in terms of either music (mostly iffy “indie” pop) and image (false angst on the record cover).

Leong’s follow-up, Courage (勇氣) was a second chance at a coming-out for the young singer and her veteran producer Jonathan Lee (李宗盛).  The result is sophomore maturity with freshman appeal.  Fish Leong in 2000 became a cheerful face with appropriately cheerful, well-crafted songs.  Courage is turn-of-the-millennium Mando-pop done right – nothing more, nothing less.

Thinking back to the genre around 2000, it’s clear Leong fit in with the best: a bit of Stefanie Sun’s optimism, a bit of Rene Liu’s good sense, a bit of Ah-mei’s romanticism (at least in Ah-mei’s more subdued moments).  The best parts of Courage, I think, are those that know that Leong is a mellow balladeer without being self-consciously “indie.”  “Many Clear Days” (多數是晴天) and “Half a Moon” (半個月亮) are unassuming guitar-driven tunes that manage to have both attitude and sweetness.  “At the End” (最後) is an acoustic ballad that is smart about how to use Leong’s moderate power: there’s a fragility in her voice when she sings the words “at the end” to anticipate a not-so cheerful future.

The album’s best track, “If There is a Day” (如果有一天) reaches a sort of rocker edge without abandoning its pop roots.  Its fist-pump chorus soars as Leong ponders the past: “will meeting again turn back the hands of time?”  The fun “The Rottenest Reason” (最爛的理由) begins with a “Don’t Tell Me” guitar intro (though in all fairness, Courage preceded Madonna’s Music by a few months).  In the opening line, Leong squeals the words “rottenest reason” with a headstrong rebelliousness which, coupled with the tambourine taps and overall improvy vibe, gives the track a campus pub spunk.

One of the tragedies of contemporary Mando-pop is that any album without bad songs is considered a major accomplishment.  Courage has no bad songs.  The Chen Hsiao-hsia (陳小霞) composition “Yesterday” (昨天) thrives on a lovely chorus which alternates dizzyingly between a quick pace and longing hesitation.  “Loving You Takes More Than Two or Three Days” (愛你不是兩三天) is up-tempo fun, with its staccato chorus and “badap-badap” backing.  Even the album’s plainest song, the Tanya Chua composed “A Swimming Pool without Water” (沒有水的游泳池), is perfectly pleasant.

“Love to Dispute” (愛計較) is just Leong and a piano, and her rambling voice takes on a girl rock stubbornness during a chorus that never seems to wind down, building its growl line by overlapping line.  The writing is actually quite poetic in its drone-like repetitions: “I love to dispute you / because you’re important / too important / you’re good to everyone / but not good to me / not good enough to me / how much of my words do you hear / how much do you hear.”  (I can’t capture the rhymes in this English translation, but I hope my lack of punctuation gets at the chorus’s babbling rhythm.)

The album’s most famous track is the Treasure Venture (俠女闖天關) theme song “Courage” (勇氣), by now a karaoke classic for good reason: a hummable melody, simple words, a memorable hook.  The lyrics are a bit adolescent for my taste (“Love truly requires courage to stand up to the false rumors”), while the simple opening piano notes which mirror the simple chorus melody, and the overall “we can do it!” sentimentality strike me as a bit cheesy.  Still, it’s an accomplishment of basic pop craft nonetheless, the kind of strong production that makes Fish Leong’s second album a fine listen.

 

1975-1993: #71, Pao Mei-sheng, “Pao Mei-sheng’s Songs” (包美聖, 包美聖之歌) (1980) (Bao Meisheng)

Pao Mei-sheng, Pao Mei-sheng's Songs, 1980

Pao Mei-sheng, Pao Mei-sheng’s Songs, 1980

ranking: #71 on 1975-1993 list

Pao Mei-sheng’s Songs (包美聖之歌) is a perfectly good record.  It’s just that no matter how many times I try to listen to it from beginning to end, I fall asleep.  Pao Mei-sheng (包美聖) has a glorious voice – it’s as crisp and light as you could want from a pop star singing in a high register.  But what sets her apart from, say, Chyi Yu is that Pao has a fairly limited emotional range.  In fact, she has just one: gentle.  That bird-like twitter works well at the beginning of an album, as on the quite-good opener “Wait for Me in the Deep of Sunset” (你在日落深處等我) written by Chiu Chen.  Her dream-like chant (“wait for me!”) which begins the song does wonders for setting a scene.

But how much of it can we really take?  There’s absolutely nothing at stake from beginning to end; the album is simply a showcase for a sweet voice and some sweet melodies.  The lyrics have no heft and the productions are as light-as-a-feather as the vocals (think pianos, xylophones, and strings).  “Hold on to Now” (把握現在) is technically marvelous but goes nowhere.  The album’s pop adaptations of classical poetry are academic in the worst sense.  “Short Song” (短歌) has the right idea: Pao Mei-sheng’s gentle ditties should only run for a little over two minutes at a time.

At its best Pao Mei-sheng’s Songs has melodies so infectious as to completely transcend the emotional limitations of Pao’s otherwise lovely voice.  The Chiu Chen composition “See Me Hear Me” (看我聽我) is clap-happy fun with “ooh-oohs” to spare.

And then there’s the luminous “Catch a Mudfish” (捉泥鰍) which wholly deserves its status as a Mando-pop classic.  Though the entire album has the feel of a kid’s album (mostly because it’s sanitized of all uncertainty, or emotion for that matter), “Catch a Mudfish” has the most fun within the nonsense kid’s genre.  And because it doesn’t claim to be about anything (unlike, for instance, the Pao-penned coming-of-age “Growing Up: Realizing 19″ (成長: 悟於十九)), “Catch a Mudfish” can simply enjoy being a technical marvel.  I thoroughly enjoy the dramatic pentatonic instrumental opening and breaks.  But what I love most is following along to songwriter Hou De-jian’s stunning rhythmic variations, which constantly shuffle back and forth between sweet legatos and charming stutters in double time.  And only in such moments do I genuinely appreciate Pao Mei-sheng’s technical skill; the emotion lies not in Pao’s voice but in my own exhileration, as she hops through the side-winding melodic lines and jagged meter.

 

1993-2005: #24, Jay Chou, “Jay” (周杰倫, 周杰倫) (2000) (Zhou Jielun)

Jay Chou, Jay, 2000

Jay Chou, Jay, 2000

ranking: #24 on 1993-2005 list

“Whoo!”  So starts “Adorable Woman” (可愛女人), the first track off of the first album by wunderkind pop idol Jay Chou (周杰倫).  At once cheesy and downright breathtaking, the exaltation of romantic bliss announces the arrival of what is soon to be Taiwan’s most celebrated music star.  No wispy guitar, no virtuosic piano, no synthetic dance beat.  Just a burst of pop cool.  One word in, and you already know if you’re going to hate Jay the sua ku poseur or be taken away by Jay the freshest talent in Taiwanese pop since Lo Ta-yu.

When Chou’s debut Jay (周杰倫) first came out, the 21-year-old was heralded as a musical genius as composer, pianist, and possibly vocalist.  The original album cover and liner notes depict him as something of a music nerd, the loner who would rather talk about chords and influences than most anything else.  For many in Taiwan, this is the Jay Chou they choose to remember, and Jay is the only Jay Chou album they’ll admit to liking.  Which isn’t surprising, given that there was nothing before that sounded quite like it, and that afterward, there were countless albums imitating it, including Chou’s own subsequent records.

Thematically there’s little new here (love, love, and love), and it’s perhaps less daring than Chou’s later work.  But there’s something about the construction that has even skeptics agreeing that the usual sentimentality is coded in a vernacular that’s far more ambitious than the standard pop.  “Tornado” (龍捲風) twists Vivian Hsu’s trite lyrics into a rhythmic and melodic cyclone that gives sonic form to the song title.  “Perfection” (完美主義) ends with a strange chant of Jay’s name over and over — it can’t quite be explained as a “what’s my name?” boast, or seemingly by any other logic.  Yet it makes complete sense in a track composed of cell phone rings and equally strange chatter by a voice whose hard-to-place accent is something like Jamaican Chinese.  The sonic collage continues with the rubber-on-basketball court screeching of “Bullfight” (鬥牛), a more straightforward street boast whose staccato verses would be legitimately threatening if not for the fairly tame lyrics by regular Chou collaborator Vincent Fang (方文山).

It’s become a cliche to note the way Chou slurs syllables in his fast songs, and unfortunately, such claims have simplified Chou’s musical accomplishment.  The final track “Counter-clockwise Clock” (反方向的鐘) features lyrics so frivolously sung that I could not make out a single line without the help of the lyrics sheet.  Yet the moods of the song are perfectly clear.  It’s a bit of an abstract song to begin with, as it starts with Chou singing the Chinese “ABCs,” perhaps conjuring a sense of fated directionality (it goes “bo po mo fo” not “fo mo po bo”).  The first verse is a mesmerizing onslaught of four-character mumbles in 16 monotonous iterations.  With the bridge we get some tonal variation, but more importantly, longer phrases that break from the four-character structure of the opening verse.  Then, in the chorus, we’re back to the four-character form, only to escape it in a transcendent emancipation from time.

Much has also been made of Chou’s rapping style, and I will save more specific comments on Chou’s innovation for a future post.  But I must mention the brilliant “Wife” (娘子), a concoction of classical Chinese imagery spun together as a hip-hop ode.  The anguished way Chou spouts the title words “niang zi” in the rap intro is simultaneously street-whipped swagger and Chinese tragedy theatrics.  When Chou shifts into singing, the delivery is as rhythmic and rapid as the rap.  Again, the lyrics are indecipherable.  All we can make out is a smattering of classical images (a willow tree, a jug of wine, a river, a red bean) delivered as a postmodern blast of lyricism with 21st century cool.  The rap-singing overlapping at the end of the song tops off the awesomeness with even more awesomeness.  That sort of excess is just Jay’s way.

There are great romantic moments as well.  “Black Humor” (黑色幽默) is one of Jay’s all-time best ballads and shows him stretching his vocal range more than any of his songs have since.  “Starry Mood” (星晴) has pretty uninspired lyrics, written by Chou himself, but corralled into a killer sing-along chorus with ascending melody (“Hand in hand, one step two step three step four step toward the sky / Up above, one star two star three star four star strung together”), Chou is invincible.  And then there’s that memorable opening track, “Adorable Woman,” which has a similar uptempo which depicts young love as a cocksure strut.  As the narrator of his songs, Jay Chou rarely reveals vulnerability, and that confidence — whether as lover, basketball player, etc. — is set to propel Chou forward as a musical force of uncommon creativity.

 

1993-2005: #18, Stefanie Sun, “Yan Zi” (孫燕姿, 孫燕姿) (2000) (Sun Yanzi)

Stefanie Sun, Yan Zi, 2000

Stefanie Sun, Yan Zi, 2000

ranking: #18 on 1993-2005 list

For sentimental reasons, I dreaded having to hear Yan Zi (孫燕姿) again in 2009.  Not because it brings back sore memories; if anything, I associate it with good times, college days, and discovering a new generation of Mando-pop.  No, I dreaded hearing Stefanie Sun’s 2000 debut because I was afraid it was going to be much worse than I remember it being.  As one of her early fans, I followed Sun’s career closely in those days, looking forward to each subsequent release.  In recent years, however, my enthusiasm waned.  I once saw her perform in Taipei, and was underwhelmed.  Her releases became more infrequent, yet the quality of each album managed to decline nevertheless.  And with the songwriting and production increasingly uninteresting, Sun’s primary weakness — her fairly limited vocal range and vocal power — became a serious handicap.  I, to put it bluntly, lost interest in Stefanie Sun.

But my memory of her early albums — especially her debut and her sophomore My Desired Happiness (我要的幸福) which I think is still her best work — remains extremely positive.  And I’d like to keep it that way.  Which is why I approached her 2000 album with much trepidation.

However, it didn’t take long for me to relive that original joy of Sun’s music.  The croaky electronica at the beginning of “Turbo” (超快感) still announces her arrival as a fun-loving young spirit.  The chorus and musical bridge still evoke a cheerier Natalie Imbruglia.  The whistle which closes the song, like the short laugh at the beginning of “E-Lover” are still as adorable now as they were in 2000.

The latter song is one of several on the album with melodies so affectionate that they completely redeem their otherwise over-preciousness. “Fine” (很好) has a surprisingly tender chorus despite lame lyrics (“love is a castle, / if we hold hands we can find it”).  An even better example is “Love Document” (愛情證書), whose descending second line I remember being totally enamored by.  I’m not quite sure what I was thinking, but the song does hold up, certainly not because of its lyrics, but perhaps because of the kind of calm earnestness that results in harmonica instrumental breaks and organ fills.  In that song and in the chorus of “Sculpted Eyebrow” (濃眉毛), Stefanie Sun demonstrates a tendency to soar quickly in pitch, which, along with her scattered English and her Singaporean pronunciations, is a Stefanie Sun trademark that could have been annoying but rather is completely endearing.

When we speak of Sun trademarks, we cannot forget “Cloudy Day” (天黑黑), one of the greatest songs of contemporary Chinese pop, and the song which I suspect single-handedly catapulted Yan Zi into a top spot on the ranking of best albums in Taiwan.  “Cloudy Day” is, simply put, a perfect pop song: singable, moving, memorable.  The song begins with quiet piano chords which lead to the “when I was young…” opening verse.  Then the song does something few pop songs ever do.  Sun quotes a Hokkien-dialect song her grandmother used to sing, seamlessly folding in a traditional chorus into the melody of her own song.  At the same time, she transforms it from a rhythmic folk song into a longing whimper reminiscing on the past while standing in the cold of the present.  “Cloudy day, brings the rain…”  The slowly rocking piano chords and the Hokkien lyrics ring with the deep timbre of bells announcing a storm.

And then suddenly the clouds part.  Sun’s slow verse and sorrowful interpolation turns magnificently into a gust of self-confidence and a ray of hope.  It’s time to face the world.  Love is here.  Let’s leave the past behind.  Without overdoing it, Sun brings about as much vocal energy as she can muster.  Her vocal constraints work perfectly here, because we sense she’s pushed to the limit, yet it doesn’t come off as vocal excess.  Her maximum energy is still an innocent simplicity, which is precisely the point of the song.  When the self-confidence runs out, she falls easily back to the ground and eases us into a beautiful piano solo.

Beyond even its mesmerizing hook and beautiful sentimentalism, “Cloudy Day” took Taiwan by storm for good reason.  The Hokkien song Stefanie Sun cites is an oldie in Singapore, but resonates in Taiwan as well, where Hokkien is better known as Taiwanese.  The inclusion of Hokkien thus reminded listeners of an important Singapore-Taiwan connection, and also made Stefanie Sun an honorary insider, pretty much securing her place in the Taiwanese music scene.  Furthermore, the song she cites is one that many young Taiwanese and diasporic Taiwanese, like the narrator of the song, could recognize as a song from childhood sung by grandma.  It’s the kind of idealism so sentimental that even young people already know how to identify with its brand of nostalgia.

I was reminded of how rooted the song is in Taiwanese culture today, and reminded of the song’s immortality despite Sun’s own decline, when I heard it used quite brilliantly in Chang Rong-ji’s sweet short film The End of the Tunnel (天黑), in which a blind man brings a heartbroken college student to tears by playing the song.  Stefanie Sun’s folding together of romance, coming-of-age, and personal self-confidence fits the film perfectly, and I think encapsulates the spirit and sound of those entering adulthood at the turn of the millennium.  If the rest of the album has me worried about my own innocent fandom circa 2000, “Cloudy Day” assures me that the songs from one’s past can comfort us into maturity.